THE  LIBRARY 

1  -  OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

GUT  OF 
Max  Weston  Ihornburg 


Courtesy  of  The  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art 

THE    QUEEN    OF   SHEBA 


THE 
QUEEN  OF  SHEBA 

HER  LIFE  AND  TIMES 


BY 
PHINNEAS    A.    CRUTCH 

B.A.,  M.A.,  F.P.A.,  S.O.S. 


ILLUSTRATED 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 
NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

tEbe  Umicfcerbocfcer  press 
1922 


Copyright,  1922 

by 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


LOAN  STACK- 


C  7^6  7 


£/ 


To 
C.  R.  H. 


439 


FOREWORD 

Countless  volumes,  incunabula,  brochures  and 
miscellany,  with  which  every  student  of  history  is 
intimately  acquainted,  have  been  issued  concerning 
the  more  salient  incidents  of  the  life  and  reign  of 
Balkis,  Queen  of  Sheba. 

One  has  only  to  speculate,  as  indeed  one  can 
scarcely  abstain  from  doing  in  moments  of  fasci- 
nated leisure,  upon  this  richly  controversial  sub- 
ject, to  call  to  mind  at  once  such  authoritative  works 
as  Professor  Hornblower's  The  Enigma  of  Sheba, 
with  its  masterly  discussions  based  on  contempo- 
rary sources,  in  which  he  conclusively  disposes  of 
the  distorted  reports  touching  upon  the  Queen's 
accession;  Gorton's  Secret  Memoirs  of  the  Court 
of  Sheba,  which,  in  spite  of  a  deplorable  tendency 
on  the  author's  part  to  accept  canard  for  chronicle, 
nevertheless  remains  a  monumental  contribution 
of  its  kind  to  the  bibliography  of  the  period; 
Heimweh's  scholarly  monograph,  Zeitgenossen  der 
Konigdn  Balkis,  an  admirable  study  of  the  social 
and  literary  movements  of  her  time;  and  Gaston 
Poteau's  delightful  Voyages  de  la  Eeine  de  Saba, 
which  needs  no  recommendation  other  than  its  own 
charm  and  whimsicality  of  comment,  even  in  less 
purely  Sheban  circles  of  research. 

If,  at  so  late  a  date,  one  presumes  to  offer  an 


additional  treatise  supplementing  the  foregoing, 
chosen  at  random  from  amid  the  mass  of  printed 
material  inspired  by  this  extraordinary  reign,  it  is 
from  a  conviction,  fathered  by  hope,  that  a  wider 
survey  of  the  time  than  is  set  forth  in  any  of  the 
more  specialized  existing  documents  will  be  in- 
dulgently received — and  particularly  by  that  great 
reading  body  of  the  public  which  is  ever  more 
deeply  concerned  with  the  human  frailties  of  a 
career  than  with  its  statecraft,  more  warmly  stirred 
by  a  glimpse  of  unrecorded  impulse  than  by  the 
graven  monuments  of  staid  deliberation,  more 
closely  sympathetic  to  the  personal  record  of 
advancing  years  than  to  the  cold  chronology  of 
edicts. 

It  is  in  this  spirit,  therefore,  a  spirit  of  lenient 
toleration,  of  mild  reserve  in  the  face  of  temptatious 
criticism,  of  restrained  veracity  untouched  by  any 
gossipry,  claver,  or  reportage,  that  one  approaches 
the  life  and  age  of  Balkis,  Queen  of  Sheba — she 
who  was  born  before  her  time  and  remained  to 
outlive  her  day,  in  whom  the  East  and  the  West 
were  met  and  the  lioness  couchant  with  the  ewe, 
whose  way  was  paved  with  well-intentioned  errancy, 
for  whom  no  reticence  was  too  forbidding,  no 
curiosity  too  shameless,  no  new  departure  too 


VI 


prodigal  of  candlelight.  She,  who  was  but  a  child, 
and  yet  who  stood  alone  in  the  midst  of  bearded 
men,  and,  with  many  innocent  questions,  brought 
them  to  their  separate  ends. 

La  petite  Balkis,  as  Gaston  Poteau  so  quaintly 
puts  it  ... 

P.  A.  C. 


vii 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD v 

CHAPTER 

I. — EAST   OF  SUEZ 3 

II.— -BABY  BALKIS 25 

III. — POMPS  AND  CIRCUMSTANCES 49 

IV. — BALKIS  is  WILLING 76 

V. — SOLOMON,  HIRAM  AND  SHUSH 93 

VI. — PILGRIM'S  PROGRESS 116 

VII.— THE  YOUNG  VISITOR 138 

VIII.— OVER  THE  HOT  SANDS 171 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 191 


IX 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

THE  QUEEN  OF  SHEBA Frontispiece 

Courtesy  of  The  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art. 

THE  QUEEN  OF  SHEBA  SETTING  OUT  ON  HER  JOURNEY 
TO  JERUSALEM 96 

Courtesy  of  The  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art. 

THE    QUEEN    OF   SHEBA   ARRIVING   AT   THE    GATES    OF 
JERUSALEM       .     .     .  • 124 

Courtesy  of  The  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art. 

CLEARING  THE  APPROACHES  TO  JERUSALEM  ON  THE  DAY 

OF  THE  QUEEN'S  ARRIVAL 

From  a  Contemporary  Painting. 


XI 


"A  woman  gifted  with  everything,  and  she  hath  a  splendid 
throne." 

The  Koran,  Sura  XXVII. 

"La  petite  Balkis.  .  .  ." 

Gaston  Poteao,  Voyages  de  la  Relne  de  Saba. 

"Every  inch  of  the  way  a  Queen." 
Anonymous. 


Xlli 


THE  QUEEN  OF  SHEBA 


THE  QUEEN  OF  SHEBA 

CHAPTER  I 


EAST  OF  SUEZ 


The  first  millennium,  old  style,  dawned  lugubri- 
ously for  Sheba. 

For  more  than  three  centuries  she  had  seen  the 
glory  of  the  coming  of  a  hundred  lords.  When 
it  was  not  Rameses  II  it  was  Menephthah.  When 
it  was  not  Menephthah  it  was  the  Children  of  Israel. 
In  Assyria,  no  sooner  was  Shalmaneser  laid  with 
his  uncles  and  his  aunts  than  Tiglathpileser  I  was 
afoot.  And  after  him  Ashurnazirpal.  And  after 
them  both,  Merdukzer  and  Eulmashshakinshum, 
the  Babylonians.  Nearer  home,  the  Kings  of  Ma'in 
were  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,  a  pebble  in  the  shoe,  a 
mote  in  the  eye.  More  recently,  too,  the  power  of 
Tyre  was  risen  to  be  a  nightmare  on  the  face  of  the 
waters. 

Sheba  was  become  the  cockpit  of  Arabia. 


Now  suddenly  the  silence  of  an  uneasy  peace  en- 
veloped the  land. 

3 


The  greater  powers  to  the  northeast,  Assyria  and 
Babylon,  were  come  to  terms,  a  precarious  truce, 
fraught  with  the  dust  clouds  of  gathering  chariots. 
Ashurkirbi  and  Nabumukinpal  eyed  one  another 
sourly  from  their  neighboring  capitals  and  ex- 
changed costly  gifts,  consisting  for  the  most  part 
of  the  identical  ivory,  apes  and  peacocks  which  their 
fathers  had  exchanged  before  them. 

In  Egypt  the  Pharaoh  was  poorly,  and  kept  to 
his  fleshpots. 

Up  in  Israel,  Saul  was  dead,  and  David  drew 
near  to  his  end,  content  to  marvel  at  the  wisdom  of 
the  youth  Solomon,  his  son,  or  to  sit  in  the  gate  re- 
hearsing the  days  of  the  siege,  when  the  city  of  Jeru- 
salem was  taken  from  the  Jebusites.  This  was  the 
old  King's  favorite  anecdote,  now  that  the  incidents 
of  his  encounter  with  Goliath  had  begun  to  pale. 

"And,"  he  would  chuckle,  "they  tried  that  the 
blind  and  the  lame  would  be  enough  to  keep  me  out. 
And  I  cried,  Is  that  so? — Go  up  the  drain  into  the 
midst  of  the  city  and  turn  on  those  blind  and  lame 
ones  and  smite  them,  foot  and  mouth!"  1 

It  was  on  one  of  these  occasions  that  Solomon 
made  his  famous  bon  mot,  often  erroneously  attri- 
buted to  Jeroboam. 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  49,  v.  6. 


»  1 


"It's  a  long  drain  that  has  no  turning.1 

Tyre,  Mistress  of  the  Sea,  manned  her  fearless 
twin-ruddered  ships  for  the  long  journey  to  Punt 
and  Ophir,  and  pushed  forth  boldly  on  many  an 
adventurous  keel  into  the  Unknown  Ocean.  It  had 
hitherto  always  been  supposed  that  the  earth  was 
shaped  like  a  saucer,  rimmed  with  void,  floating 
under  a  dome  of  intermittently  luminous  revolving 
bodies.  But  with  each  returning  argosy  it  became 
increasingly  patent  that  the  earth  was  flat,  stretch- 
ing boundlessly  hither  and  yon,  interspersed  with 
rolling  waters. 

True,  this  great  discovery  was  not  admitted  by 
the  old  school  without  due  persecution.  The  great 
navigator,  Hanno  the  Elder,  was  haled  before  the 
Suffetes  of  the  Port  of  Tyre  and  forced  to  recant, 
under  penalty  of  being  fed  to  the  sea  lions.  Under 
the  circumstances  he  surrendered  to  their  prejudice, 
but  the  gruff  old  salt  was  none  the  less  convinced  of 
the  validity  of  his  claim. 

"It  may  seem  curved  to  you  and  me,"  he 
grumbled  under  his  breath  as  he  left  the  council 
chamber,  "but  it's  just  as  flat  as  it  used  to  be — and 
if  this  be  sacrilege  make  the  most  of  it !"  2 

1  Ibid.,  ch.  49,  v.  17. 

a  Memoirs  of  Hanno  the  Elder,  ch.  8,  p.  209. 

5 


And,  little  by  little,  the  new  cartography  was 
generally  adopted,  even  though  the  phraseology  of 
charter-parties  still  clung  to  the  old  exemption 
clauses — "the  Trident  of  Neptune,  the  Perils  of  the 
Rim  and  the  Acts  of  Hostile  Deities" — so  that  the 
water  borne  commerce  of  Tyre  was  greatly  ex- 
alted over  that  of  other  nations  who  still  cautiously 
forbore  to  tempt  disaster  at  what  they  supposed  to 
be  the  edge  of  the  world. 

This,  as  may  be  imagined,  proved  a  source  of 
great  profit  to  the  Tyrians,  who  set  about  with  all 
their  national  cunning  to  encourage  this  state  of 
mind  among  their  neighbors,  the  while  they  them- 
selves were  rapidly  expanding  their  new-found 
commercial  empire,  over  which  it  was  their  proud 
boast  that  the  shades  of  night  never  fell. 

3 

To  the  north  and  west,  in  Ma'in,  the  aged  Shush 
sat  rooted  to  the  throne. 

Descended  from  the  macrobian  Patriarch 
Fathers,  rehearsing  his  ancestry  on  both  sides  to  the 
original  settlers  of  Arabia  who  had  migrated  with 
the  Ark,  this  venerable,  blue-nosed  monarch  was 
now  two  hundred  and  forty-six  years  old.  As  Le- 
page so  aptly  characterises  him: 


"He  was  long-headed,  long-winded  and  long- 
lived."  l 

The  old  ruler's  great-great-grandson,  the  Heir 
Apparent,  was  ninety-four.  Six  hundred  and 
seventy-eight  nephews,  nieces  and  other  miscel- 
laneous relations  gathered  annually  around  his 
board  on  the  occasion  of  his  birthday,  and  for  each 
one  he  had  a  pet  name  which  never  escaped  his  mem- 
ory, and  a  special  tidbit  done  up  in  a  mother-of- 
pearl  box  incrusted  with  emeralds.2 

In  his  now  far  distant  youth,  by  reason  of  his 
constant  disturbance  of  the  security  of  adjacent 
peoples,  Shush  had  earned  for  himself  the  title  of 
Offender  of  the  Peace.  In  all  Araby,  surely,  no 
monarch  ever  played  the  role  of  spear  shaker  and 
shield  pounder  more  obstreperously  and  more  inop- 
portunely than  this  young  jackanapes  during  the 
first  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  his  reign. 

Sprung  from  a  long  line  of  warrior  forbears,  the 

aTrouthook,  in  his  fascinating  Street  Cries  and  Epithets  of  Old 
Ma'in,  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  catchword  Long  live  the  King  had 
its  inception  during  this  reign,  but  Popover  and  Bjorn  both  quarrel 
with  this  view,  voicing  the  theory  that  the  phrase  in  its  original 
form  was  How  long  the  King  lives.  Both  renderings,  however, 
occur  in  Tortoni. 

3  It  is  to  this  habit  of  his  that  Steinkopf  traces  the  custom  of 
distributing  portions  of  cake  at  later  marriage  ceremonies,  although, 
as  he  points  out,  the  quality  of  the  containers  rapidly  deteriorated. 

7 


militaristic  atmosphere  of  his  early  environment,  all 
the  ruthless  tradition  of  his  ancestors,  so  well  ex- 
pressed in  the  arrogant  motto  of  his  house,  "With 
Might  and  Main"  all  the  abject  sycophancy  of 
Mainim  historians,  seem  to  have  gone  to  the  young 
man's  head.  The  archives  of  Sheba,  and  of  Babylon 
and  Tyre,  are  full  of  references  to  his  hot-tempered 
trumpetings,  his  bull-headed  vociferations,  his 
fastuous,  not  to  say  fatuous,  cudgelry. 

No  mess  of  pottage  so  thick  but  he  must  smear 
himself  with  it  up  to  the  elbows,  no  kettle  of  fish  so 
boiling  but  he  must  burn  his  fingers  at  it,  no  diplo- 
matic dish  so  delicate  but  he  must  stamp  his  feet  in 
it,  spatter  the  gravy  where  it  might. 

"Young  King  Shush  is  a  merry  young  smelt, 
And  a  merry  young  smelt  is  he; 
He  calls  for  his  sword  and  he  calls  for  his  belt, 
And  he  calls  for  his  chariots  three.  ..." 

so  they  sang  disrespectfully  of  him  in  a  score  of 
capitals. 

He  was  the  despair  of  his  ministers,  who  found 
themselves  obliged  to  mitigate  the  crudities  of  his 
ill-considered  pronouncements,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
famous  letter  of  condolence  to  Goliath's  widow; 
but,  it  must  be  said,  the  idol  of  his  people,  who  re- 

8 


veled  in  the  gaiety  which  their  handsome,  head- 
strong prince  contributed  to  the  family  of  nations. 

Indeed,  his  fondness  for  posturing  in  the  inter- 
national limelight  led  him  to  extraordinary  lengths, 
in  which  his  sense  of  the  dramatic  entirely  obliter- 
ated whatever  instincts  of  good  taste  may  have 
been  his  portion.  He  seems  to  have  been  utterly 
devoid  of  any  sense  of  humor. 

At  home,  among  other  unrelated  occupations,  he 
tried  his  hand  in  turn  at  pottery  making,  mural 
inscription,  sarcophagus  painting,  musical  and 
poetic  composition,  peacock  farming,  ventriloquism, 
and  the  manufacture  of  jewelry.  The  little  mother- 
of-pearl  boxes  incrusted  with  emeralds  with  which 
he  was  wont  to  gladden  the  eye  of  his  guests  were 
all  the  product  of  the  royal  factory.  So  great  was 
the  pride  of  craftsmanship  which  he  lavished  upon 
these  mementos  that  any  expression  of  disparage- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  recipient  would  have  been 
fatally  ill-advised. 

"At  least,"  his  grandmother  said  one  day,  "a  box 
from  his  hand  is  worth  two  on  the  ear!" 

He  never  spoke  to  her  again.  On  her  deathbed, 
at  the  foot  of  which  he  was  obliged  to  show  himself 
for  a  moment,  she  smiled  at  him  whimsically  and 
remarked: 

9 


"A  box  for  everything,  and  everything  in  its 
box!"1 

His  hankering  for  statuary,  and  his  passion  for 
having  himself  pictured  on  camelback  were  bywords 
in  the  kingdom.  The  walls  of  his  summer  palace 
at  Yathil  were  enriched  with  four  hundred  and 
ninety-two  frescoes  of  himself  in  as  many  hippie 
poses,  and  in  his  pleasure  gardens  there  was  scarcely 
room  to  turn  amid  the  marble  effigies  of  his  chang- 
ing moods. 

"The  majority  of  monarchs,"  his  prime  minister 
remarked  on  one  occasion,  "busy  themselves  with 
statutes.  This  one  is  only  occupied  with  statues." 

To  which  a  quick-witted  courtier  added  that  the 
description  fitted  to  a  T- 

It  is  in  his  more  public  manifestations,  however, 
that  he  appeared  to  the  least  advantage.  Outhouse 
says  of  his  famous  journey  to  Ethiopia  and  Egypt 
that  ".  .  .  he  comported  himself  in  each  locality 
in  a  manner  calculated  to  scandalise  his  hosts  and 
startle  the  polloi.  In  Ethiopia  he  was  more 
Ethiopian  than  the  Ethiopians,  which  was  saying 
a  great  deal,  going  about  in  leopard  skins  and 
feathered  head-dresses,  followed  by  a  bevy  of 
lionesses.  Before  the  Pyramid  of  Ghizeh  he  burst 

1  Lepage,  Le  Roi  ^Shush  Quint,  ch.  3,  p.  102. 

10 


into  tears,  overcome,  as  he  said,  by  the  sight  of 
such  quantities  of  stone.  At  Thebes  he  took  the 
Sacred  Bull  by  the  horns,  and  conducted  a 
violent  flirtation  with  Aida,  one  of  the  Queen's 
slaves. 


Now,  after  more  than  two  hundred  years,  he  was 
known  as  the  Sick  Man  of  Arabia. 

He  was  no  longer  young.  He  was  no  longer 
handsome.  He  was  grown  enormously  fat,  so  that 
he  had  to  be  carried  everywhere  in  a  specially  con- 
structed litter,  pendulous  and  jiggly. 

".  .  .  comme  une  montagne  de  blancmange"  as 
Lepage  has  it. 

Untold  fortunes  in  jewelry  were  buried  in  over- 
lapping folds  of  flesh  upon  his  person,  in  the  form 
of  rings  and  bracelets  which  had  vanished  from  view 
decades  before.  Not  a  hair  remained  upon  his 
scalp,  which  was  yellow  and  sere  like  an  ancient 
leaf,  and  the  loose  ends  of  his  tremendously  long 
beard  were  frayed  and  soiled  from  much  tramp- 
ling underfoot.  He  was  utterly  toothless,  blobber- 
lipped,  blind  in  one  eye,  and  deaf  as  the  cedars  of 
Lebanon.  The  ravages  of  care,  time  and  disease 
had  left  their  imprint  upon  his  cheek,  wrinkled  and 

11 


brown  like  the  skin  of  a  venerable  date,  and  his 
gangrelous  limbs  staggered  under  the  load  of  years 
which  weighed  down  upon  his  aduncous  shoulders. 

In  spite  of  which  he  remained,  within  certain 
limitations,  in  full  possession  of  his  faculties,  keen- 
witted, sharp -tongued,  and  nimble-fingered  in  the 
matter  of  mother-of-pearl  boxes.  His  statues,  his 
portraits  and  his  dramatic  gestures  were  an  ever 
present  source  of  delight  to  him;  and  through  his 
one  good  eye  he  looked  out  across  his  borders  and 
into  the  pleasant  land  of  Sheba,  and  mulled  over 
the  prospect,  biding  his  time. 

A  portentous  old  man,  whose  grandniece  had 
been  the  mother  of  the  present  King  of  Sheba. 

5 

And  within  the  borders  of  Sheba  a  precarious 
state  of  affairs  prevailed. 

The  grandniece  of  the  King  of  Ma'in  had  ruled 
as  Queen  Consort  in  Sheba  for  exactly  three  and 
one  half  days,  two  and  three  quarters  days  longer 
than  her  predecessor.  Only  in  her  case  the  demise 
was  shared  by  her  husband,  as  a  result  of  one  of 
those  palace  insurrections  which  do  so  much  to 
brighten  the  otherwise  drab  annals  of  the  Court  of 
Sheba  during  that  era. 

12 


Her  son,  Jehaz,  born  while  she  was  yet  Crown 
Princess  of  Sheba,  a  position  which  she  occupied, 
off  and  on,  for  thirty-nine  years,  ascended  the  steps 
of  the  throne  from  which  the  traces  of  the  late 
unpleasantness  had  scarcely  evaporated,  and  en- 
deared himself  at  once  to  his  subjects,  great  lovers 
as  they  were  of  swiftly  administered  justice,  by 
putting  to  death  in  the  public  square  of  his  capital 
two  hundred  and  forty-six  participants  in  the  recent 
insurrection,  to  say  nothing  of  six  hundred  and 
eighty-two  innocent  bystanders  who  had  purchased 
coigns  of  vantage  at  the  execution  for  an  ex- 
travagant sum  from  the  speculators. 

The  message  received  from  Shush  on  this  occa- 
sion was  characteristic. 

"Faster  and  bloodier,"  he  wrote.1 

The  streets  of  Marib  ran  with  gore. 

Jehaz,  in  a  frenzy  of  filial  devotion,  went  slightly 
insane.  Gentle  and  well-mannered,  a  disciple  of 
culture  and  a  patron  of  the  arts,  comely  and  lovable, 
he  suffered  from  uncontrollable  paroxysms  of 
homicidal  mania  which  kept  his  court  in  a  perpetual 
flutter.  As  Talmud  says: 

"A  summons  to  the  royal  presence  was  always 
fraught  with  a  certain  piquancy.  One  took  one's 

1  Shenanikin,  Mirrors  of  Marib,  ch.  1,  p.  2. 

13 


u 


„-  V 


shoes  in  one  hand  and  one's  life  in  the  other  on  such 
occasions." 

When  the  fit  was  upon  him  nothing  seemed  to 
soothe  the  royal  derangement  except  the  loud  beat- 
ing of  drums,  the  clashing  of  cymbals  and  the  stac- 
cato whining  of  wind  instruments. * 

Gorton  states  that  ".  .  .  at  times  when  the 
King's  eyelids  began  to  flutter,  an  unfailing 
symptom  of  approaching  dementia,  a  perfect  caco- 
phony of  conflicting  sounds  poured  forth  from  the 
palace,  not  only  as  a  result  of  the  efforts  of  his  own 
devoted  troup  of  musicians,  but  on  account  of  the 
fact  that  all  those  attached  to  his  person  formed 
the  habit  of  going  about  the  corridors  preceded 
each  by  his  own  band,  lest  they  should  come  upon 
the  King  unawares  .  .  . 

Perhaps  the  saddest  instance  resulting  from  these 
lapses  was  the  case  of  the  Little  Princes  of  Hadra- 
maut,  who,  playing  about  the  palace  grounds  one 
day  all  unconscious  of  the  royal  peril,  were  seized 
by  him  and  flung  into  the  Tower  of  Babel, 
where  they  perished  miserably  of  bedlam.  The 
King's  grief  upon  learning  of  this  event  from  the 

1Kernberlin,  in  his  Music  of  the  Ancients,  ch.  2,  p.  5,  suggests  in 
this  the  origin  of  the  modern  term  "jazz,"  applied  to  certain  decadent 


forms  of  music. 


14 


reproachful  parents,  was  well-nigh  unconsol- 
able. 

*I  didn't  want  to  do  it!  I  didn't  want  to  do  it!' 
he  cried  bitterly,  over  and  over  again. 

Of  course  the  mortality  among  the  musicians  was 
simply  enormous.  .  .  ." 

6 

As  may  be  imagined,  affairs  of  state  under  such 
conditions  would  have  been  at  a  standstill  in  the 
kingdom  had  it  not  been  for  the  presence  of  the 
Regent. 

Shenanikin,  Regent  of  Sheba,  was  an  extraordi- 
nary man.  The  news  of  his  parents'  death,  of  his 
brother's  accession  and  of  his  own  consequent  eleva- 
tion to  the  Regency  found  him  at  his  farm,  clad  in 
the  simple  garb  of  a  husbandman,  engaged  in  a 
series  of  experiments  tending  towards  the  evolution 
of  a  skinless  prune.  When  informed  by  the  envoys 
of  the  parlous  emergency  at  Marib  he  silenced  them 
with  a  dignified  gesture  and  proceeded  to  the  con- 
clusion of  his  experiment,  remarking  as  he  did 
so: 

"Verily,  there  are  more  ways  than  one  of  skin- 
ning a  prune."  l 

1  Transom,  Eminent  Shebang,  ch.  1,  p.  1. 

15 


Once  established  at  Marib,  after  a  number  of 
hairbreadth  escapes  from  his  brother's  aberrations, 
he  adopted  the  policy  of  avoiding  him  entirely, 
maintaining  an  independent  establishment  in  a 
distantly  remote  part  of  the  palace.  On  the  rare 
occasions  when  he  found  it  necessary  to  communi- 
cate with  him  in  person  he  took  the  precaution  of 
setting  his  speeches  to  music,  causing  them  to  be 
played  to  the  King  by  a  full  orchestra  of  his 
favorite  instruments.1 

In  fact  Shenanikin's  whole  conduct  of  affairs 
was  inspired  by  an  exemplary  caution,  sweetened 
by  a  very  facile  gift  of  oratory.  Gorton,  who 
devotes  much  space  to  him,  says  that — 

"In  the  art  of  flattery  he  was  unsurpassed,  his 
subtle  encomiums  lying  like  the  rich  cheese  of  goats 
thick  on  the  bread  of  his  statements.  Nor  did  he 
confine  himself  to  subtleties,  but  spread  his  ca- 
joleries with  a  two-handed  trowel  upon  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  hearers,  in  a  manner  which  left 
them  pleasantly  giddy. 

He  was,  of  course,  enormously  popular.  .  .  ." 

This  is  Gorton  at  his  best,  but  as  is  so  often  the 
case  with  him  he  has  entirely  misconstrued  the 

1Steinkopf  has  an  interesting  chapter  in  which  he   suggests   the 
origin  of  grand  opera  in  this  custom. 

16 


character  of  his  subject.  If  Shenanikin  was  soft- 
spoken,  velvet-tongued  and  felt-slippered,  as  in 
fact  he  was,  it  was  only  the  outward  expression  of 
the  gentle  soul,  the  timid,  modest  nature,  the  kind, 
charitable  heart  of  the  man. 

Transom,  in  his  Eminent  Shebans*  is  more 
generous  and,  indeed,  infinitely  more  accurate. 

"Something  pathetic,"  he  says,  "something 
tremendously  appealing  in  the  short,  roly-poly 
figure  in  the  everlasting  loosely  flapping  slippers, 
pattering  about  the  palace  corridors  on  a  multi- 
plicity of  infinitesimal  errands.  Bucolic  by  in- 
stinct, fate  called  him  to  the  choleric  council  rooms 
of  Kings.  A  lover  of  nature,  and  of  the  tiny 
melodies  of  bees  and  birds,  they  surrounded  him 
with  blaring  bands. 

Industrious  and  painstaking,  a  tireless  picker  up 
and  putter  away  of  minute  nothings,  the  intellect  of 
a  philosopher  bent  over  the  petty  tasks  of  a  scribe. 
An  old  man  with  a  duster.  Such  was  Shenanikin, 
Regent  of  Sheba." 


Jehaz  had  been  married  six  times. 

His  first  wife,  Stitch,  a  Princess  of  Punt,  so  dis- 

1  Ch.  1,  p.  2. 

a  17 


pleased  him  by  her  cantankerous  disposition  that  he 
had  her  quietly  murdered,  to  the  great  relief  not 
only  of  himself  but  of  his  entire  court  who  could  not 
abide  the  lady.  It  is  of  her  that  the  Mainim  Envoy 
made  his  famous  remark,  reported  in  Bjorn — 

"A  Stitch  in  time  saves  nine."  l 

Hornblower  does  not  mince  any  words  concern- 
ing her. 

"She  combined,"  he  says,  "in  her  own  mordacious 
person  all  of  the  less  attractive  qualities  of  a  bowl 
of  sour  milk." 

His  second,  third  and  fourth  wives  Jehaz  ac- 
cidentally slaughtered  while  under  the  influence  of 
his  malady;  and  to  his  intense  subsequent  annoy- 
ance and  mortification,  more  especially  as  each  inci- 
dent of  this  nature  made  it  increasingly  difficult  to 
provide  a  suitable  partner  for  his  somewhat  hazard- 
ous throne.  By  his  fifth  wife,  however,  Zenobia, 
daughter  of  the  Emperor  of  Kush,  he  had  nine 
sons.  Six  of  these  he  did  away  with  at  various 
times  and  for  diverse,  and  often  extremely  sundry, 
reasons,  two  of  them  killed  each  other  in  boyish  fun, 
and  the  last  committed  suicide  out  of  pique, 
angered  by  the  attention  which  his  brothers  were 
attracting.  Nothing  daunted,  Jehaz  reluctantly 

1  The  Origin  of  Catchwords,  p.  6. 

18 


si  "wv  H    °t 

uf  -<H    \_J 


strangled  Zenobia,  who  had  begun  to  weary  him 
with  her  ceaseless  lamentations. 

Shortly  afterwards,  he  married  the  Princess 
Anabasis  of  Troy,  and  this  union  was  blessed  with 
four  sons,  Eni,  Meni,  Maini  and  Mo,  who  were 
immediately  removed  from  the  proximity  of  the 
King,  as  the  question  of  the  succession  was  now 
exercising  the  minds  of  his  ministers.  Jehaz,  fully 
aware  of  his  own  fatal  proclivities,  readily  agreed 
to  this  arrangement,  and  decreed,  moreover,  that 
Anabasis  should  accompany  the  royal  infants. 

And  then  he  took  up  Shimhi. 

8 

This  Shimhi,  destined  to  become  seventh  Queen 
Consort  of  Sheba,  was  a  mere  funambulist,  a  high- 
vaulter,  a  lofty-tumbler,  an  aerosaltant — in  other 
words  a  rope-dancer. 

A  Scythian  by  birth  and  of  very  low  origin,  in 
fact  of  no  origin  whatsover,  she  captivated  the 
susceptibilities  of  Jehaz  during  one  of  her  perform- 
ances at  the  palace  theatre  by  the  extraordinary 
beauty  of  her  features,  the  grace  of  her  person  and 
the  breathless  daring  of  her  poses,  in  the  course  of 
which  she  achieved  contortions  on  the  slack  rope  as 
classical  as  they  were  surprising. 

19 


The  King  would  not  be  gainsaid.  The  little 
dancer,  for  her  part,  all  oblivious  of  the  future,  was 
nothing  loth.  No  sooner  said  than  done.  Shimhi 
awoke  to  find  herself  Queen  of  Sheba. 

It  was  her  last  happy  moment. 

From  the  very  first  day  her  position  at  court  was 
extremely  insecure  and  called  for  the  continuous 
exertion  of  all  her  powers  of  equilibrium.  As  it 
was  she  never  obtained  more  than  a  toe-hold,  which, 
while  it  may  have  been  sufficient  for  a  contortionist, 
was  not  adequate  support  for  a  Consort.  Ana- 
basis, of  course,  made  herself  peculiarly  disagreea- 
ble in  more  ways  than  one,  the  outpourings  of  her 
jealous  spite  culminating  in  a  shocking  scene 
during  the  course  of  which  she  cast  aspersions  on 
the  new  Queen's  character,  not  to  mention  various 
articles  of  furniture  at  her  person,  and  wound  up 
the  recital  of  her  scorn  with  that  blistering  insult 
which  has  often  been  called  the  Curse  of  Sheba. 

"May  your  children  all  be  acrobats!"  she 
screamed,1  and  fell,  most  unfortunately  for  her, 
who  could  not  pretend  to  be  one,  backwards  down 
the  palace  stairs,  at  the  foot  of  which  she  was  found 
some  few  hours  later  breathing  her  last. 

"And  that's  that!"  was  the  King's  only  comment. 

1  Transom,  Eminent  Shebana,  ch.  3,  p.  17. 

20 


As  for  Shimhi,  she  merely  shrugged  her 
shoulders,  with  that  increasingly  rapid  quivering 
motion,  beginning  at  the  waist  and  ending  at  the 
finger  tips,  for  which  she  became  so  famous,  and 
executed  a  faultless  pirouette. 

"Ishkebibble"  she  laughed,  in  her  untutored 
vernacular.  "Ain't  we  got  fun?  Like  an 
actress  a  child  of  mine  it  should  not  be  yet! 
What  did  it  done  you  should  hate  it  so — Got- 
tuniu!"  l 

But  even  now,  with  Anabasis  disposed  of, 
Shimhi's  situation  was  not  greatly  improved.  The 
Sheban  nobility,  while  they  had  been  willing  enough 
to  crane  their  necks  at  her  agility,  were  less  inclined 
to  bow  them  before  her  Majesty.  Her  path  was 
strewn  with  innuendoes.  Her  slightest  slip  was 
made  a  landslide,  her  every  breach  an  earthquake, 
and  it  was  inevitable  that  she  should  commit  many. 
Lampoons  and  sneering  jests  at  her  expense 
adorned  the  palace  walls,  the  air  which  she  must 
breathe  each  day  was  poisoned  by  caustic  references 
to  her  former  calling. 

"Shimhi  be  nimble,  Shimhi  be  quick, 
Shimhi  jump  over  the  candlestick!" 

>/6»U 


"A  little  contortion  is  a  dangerous  thing."  1 

These  are  examples,  chosen  at  random,  of  the 
heavy-witted  puns  and  scurrilous  doggerel  to  which 
the  Queen  was  constantly  subjected.  Jehaz,  a  trifle 
ashamed  perhaps  of  his  own  impetuous  infatuation 
for  this  nonentity,  does  not  seem  to  have  exerted 
himself  in  her  defence  beyond  a  few  half-hearted 
wholesale  executions  and  one  general  massacre  of 
minor  poets,  known  in  Sheban  history  as  Ground- 
hog Day.2  Shenanikin  could  undoubtedly  have 
helped  her,  but  there  is  no  evidence  in  any  of  his 
correspondence  that  he  was  ever  aware  of  her 
existence,  or  she  of  his. 

Things  went  from  bad  to  worse.  Another  palace 
insurrection  was  impending.  Came  that  terrible 
night  when  the  flower  of  the  court  gathered  before 
the  Queen's  apartments  for  the  purpose  of  sharpen- 
ing their  scimitars  upon  her  doorstep. 

"Death  to  the  Scythian!"  the  corridors  rang 
with  their  bloodthirsty  cries.  "Shimhi's  crown  is 
tumbling  down,  my  fair  lady!"  3 

It  was  on  this  occasion  that  one  of  the  Queen's 
Shimhis,  as  her  ladies-in-waiting  were  called,  put 


Talmud,  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  28. 
3  Ibid. 
'  Ibid. 


her  little  finger  in  the  latch  and  held  the  mob  at 
bay. 

Shimhi  slipped  out  of  the  palace,  disguised  as  a 
swan  feeder,  and  was  never  heard  from  again. 
With  her,  as  sole  reminders  of  her  lost  greatness,  she 
took  twelve  strings  of  pearls,  nineteen  ropes  of 
diamonds,  twenty-eight  chains  of  chrysolite  and  a 
few  other  unconsidered  trifles,  amounting  in  all  to 
some  three  million  shekels.  Behind  her  she  left  a 
six  months  old  baby,  and  a  brief  letter  to  the  King 
which  has  fortunately  been  preserved  in  toto. 

"Dear  Sir,"  she  wrote.  "You  made  me  what  I 
should  be  today,  satisfaction  I  hope  you  got  it. 
Goodbye  and  God  bless  you."  * 

Gorton,  and  Hornblower,  and  even  Transom,  all 
unite  to  condemn  her  in  the  bitterest  terms,  gibbet- 
ing her  upon  the  pages  of  history  as  an  unnatural 
mother  and  an  absconding  Queen.  Under  the 
circumstances  this  appears  a  little  harsh.  In  her 
desperate  plight  it  was  a  question  with  her  of  her 
jewels  or  her  child,  and  she  chose  the  jewels,  which 
on  sober  consideration  would  seem  to  have  been  an 
excellent  choice  as  being  more  readily  portable  and 
infinitely  more  durable.  Whosoever  will,  let  him 
cast  away  the  first  precious  stone! 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  2046. 

23 


Poor  little  misunderstood  acrobat  Queen !  What 
was  she?  A  street  sparrow,  a  dancing  doormouse, 
an  innocent  tumblebug  in  a  gilded  cage.  A  vacant 
chair.  A  song  at  twilight.  Nothing  more. 

So  let  her  stand  before  the  judgment  of 
posterity. 

9 

The  baby,  a  girl,  was  taken  to  Salhin,  to  grow  up 
beside  her  four  little  half-brothers. 

Such  were  the  lineage,  parentage  and  birth  of 
the  child  who  was  to  be  known  in  years  to  come  as 
Balkis,  Queen  of  Sheba. 


CHAPTER  II 

BABY  BALKIS 


At  a  very  early  age  the  little  Queen-to-be  gave 
evidence  of  two  pronounced  peculiarities.  She  was 
ambidextrous,  and  double- jointed  throughout.  In 
addition  it  became  apparent,  as  the  light  burden  of 
her  young  years  began  to  accumulate,  that  she 
was  destined  to  be  deliriously  beautiful,  in  the  fatal 
Scythian  style  every  characteristic  of  which — 
alabaster  skin,  jade  colored  eyes,  fiery  red  or 
"salamander"  hair,  tiny  hands  and  feet — she 
possessed  to  a  bewildering  degree.  Aside  from  that 
she  was  a  romp,  a  hoyden,  a  madcap,  a  hotspur  and 
a  tomrig  of  the  first  water.  So  much  so  that  when  it 
came  time  to  furnish  a  name  for  her,  to  supplement 
her  royal  cryptonym  which  might  of  course  never 
be  uttered  above  a  whisper,  the  caconym  of  Balkis 
was  chosen,  meaning  Tomboy. 

If  any  evidence  of  her  vagarious  nature  other 
than  the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses  were  needed 
Balkis  herself  furnishes  it  in  striking  fashion. 
Perhaps  more  than  any  ruler  in  history,  certainly 
with  infinitely  greater  prolixity  than  other  con- 
temporary sovereigns,  she  rushed  into  script  on  all 
occasions  and  on  all  topics  in  a  passion  for  self- 

25 


revelation  which  proves  a  veritable  cranberry  bog 
for  her  biographers,  embarrassing  though  it  may 
have  been  for  her  relatives,  friends  and  associates 
whom  she  does  not  spare  in  her  autobiography.1 

Of  her  extraordinary  diaries  there  are  four 
hundred  and  sixty-two  volumes  extant,  half  of 
which  must  be  read  with  the  aid  of  a  mirror  since, 
on  account  of  her  ambidextrousness,  it  was  her 
practice  to  write  two  volumes  at  a  time,  one  forward 
and  the  other  backwards.  And  on  the  subject  of 
her  youthful  escapades  she  is  very  explicit,  and 
disarmingly  shameless. 

"Salhin  Palace,"  she  says  once,2  "was  designed  in 
what  is  called  the  Sheban  manorial  style,  with  roofs 
and  turrets,  and  tin  camels  on  top  of  them.  Such 
a  beautiful  structure. 

I  was  a  child  of  the  sand  dunes  and  quite 
untamable. 

I  rode  my  camel-foal  up  the  front  stairs  and 
tried  to  teach  the  Governor's  high  stepping  Bac- 
trians  to  jump,  which  they,  poor  knock-kneed 
creatures,  were  not  in  the  least  prepared  to  do 
now  that  I  look  back  on  it.  I  climbed  our  perilously 

1  Balkis  of  Sheba,  An  Autobiography,  translated  from  the  original 
MS.  by  the  Pan-Arabian  Society. 
'Childhood,  vol.  12. 


inclined  roof  and  slid  down  off  it  into  the  dunes 
sitting  on  a  salver,  by  moonlight  in  my  nightdress. 
Already  in  my  earliest  youth  I  had  scrambled  up 
every  monkey  tree,  walked  on  my  hands  on  top  of 
every  wall,  and  sat  astride  of  every  tin  camel  in  my 
childhood  home.  I  was,  I  suppose,  utterly  fearless. 
I  thought  absolutely  nothing  of  running  along  the 
narrow  ridges  of  the  roof  at  breakneck  speed,  shod 
only  in  my  gum  sandals.  This  alarmed  people  so 
much,  however,  that  I  was  reluctantly  obliged  to 
abandon  this  pastime." 

In  another  chapter  1  she  states  that : 

"I  very  soon  showed  a  remarkable  proficiency  in 
dancing  and  contortionism,  and  could  lift  both  my 
feet  to  the  level  of  my  finely  penciled  eyebrows  and 
then  clasp  them  behind  my  neck  with  disconcerting 
ease.  This  harmless  amusement,  or  so  I  found  it, 
seemed  to  shock  a  great  number  of  people  who 
went  around  saying,  'Look  at  Balkis  with  her 
Scythified  airs.'  A  remark  the  full  import  of  which 
I  only  appreciated  later,  but  then  I  was  never  one 
to  care  what  people  said  about  me." 

Again  elsewhere  2  she  observes : 

"I  was  the  life,  and  very  often  nearly  the  death, 

Childhood,  vol.  13. 
a  Ibid.,  vol.  14. 

27 


of  the  palace,  and  what  my  nurse  described  as  'a 
perfect  hell  of  a  child.'  Our  camel  driver's  wife 
called  me  a  little  microbe.  Bumptious,  excessively 
passionate,  disagreeably  plainspoken,  impertinent 
as  well  as  foolhardy,  and  always  scornful  of 
etiquette  I  was,  no  doubt,  almost  impossible  to 
tolerate." 

So  Balkis  fearlessly  describes  herself.  It  seems 
only  fitting  to  add  Talmud's  famous  characterisa- 
tion. 

"Balkis,"  he  admits  in  his  own  diaries,  "was  not  a 
plaster  saint,  nor  even  a  plaster  cast.  She  was  a 
calamitous,  clackety,  combustive  little  imp  of  crea- 
tion, full  of  furore,  improvisation,  high  tempera- 
tures, and  the  common  or  garden  bean." 


In  the  meantime  her  education,  as  befitting  a 
little  Sheban  Princess,  was  not  being  entirely 
neglected,  in  spite  of  the  great  handicap  under 
which  her  governesses  and  tutors  labored  as  a  result 
of  her  well  known  habit  of  disappearing  into  the 
dunes  for  days  and  nights  at  a  time,  accompanied 
only  by  her  faithful  Tyrian  trundletails.1 

It   was   upon   her   return   from   one   of  these 

1Canis  bellicosus. 

28 


absences,  which  had  been  even  more  prolonged  than 
usual,  that  she  made  her  famous  entrance  into  the 
audience  hall  of  the  palace  where  her  guardians 
were  assembled,  discussing  whether  after  all  it  were 
not  their  duty,  irrespective  of  their  personal  feel- 
ings, to  cause  at  least  a  nominal  search  to  be  made 
for  her.  The  debate  was  at  its  hottest,  many  being 
of  the  opinion  that  it  was  a  hopeless  and  entirely  un- 
necessary task  to  look  for  a  Princess  in  a  sand  dune, 
when  the  door  suddenly  flew  open  and  Balkis  came 
caracoling  into  the  room,  to  the  mingled  relief  and 
disappointment  of  the  council. 

"Here's  me!"  she  announced  in  her  shrill  treble.1 
It  is  almost  exclusively  owing  to  the  efforts  of 
her  devoted  nurse,  Sophonisba,  that  any  results 
whatever  in  the  matter  of  proper  upbringing  and 
breeding  were  achieved  with  the  wayward  child 
who  defied  correction  and  spurned  instruction. 
This  Sophonisba  seems  to  have  been  an  extra- 
ordinary woman  in  many  ways,  that  she  should  have 
been  able  to  remain  in  close  contact  with  her  little 
charge  for  so  long  without  losing  either  her  mind  or 
the  child  is  proof  of  that ;  and,  while  in  the  company 
of  her  other  governesses  and  teachers  Balkis  was 
forever  giving  way  to  tantrums  and  miffs — often 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  5016. 

29 


putting  their  eyes  out  with  her  thumbs  and  other- 
wise annoying  them — with  her  nurse  she  never 
resorted  to  any  bodily  violence. 

3 

Notwithstanding  the  many  interruptions  in  her 
schooling,  Balkis  was  rigorously  drilled  in  the 
fundamentals  of  learning  essential  to  a  Sheban 
young  lady  of  her  station. 

Besides  her  own  native  Sheban,  she  spoke 
Phoenician,  Mainim,  Aramaic  and  Hebrew,  and 
was  able  to  make  herself  quite  clearly  understood  in 
Aspirine,  Listerine,  Phenacetine  and  the  various 
Arsenic,  Sulphuric  and  Antiseptic  dialects.  There 
was  hardly  a  living  language  in  fact  of  which  she 
did  not  possess  at  least  a  smattering.1 

She  was  unusually  proficient  in  cuneiform  and 
hieroglyphics  as  also  in  the  difficult  Sheban  con- 
sonantal script,  written  boustrophedon,  alternately 
from  right  to  left  and  left  to  right  or  as  the  ox 
plows.  In  the  use  of  the  abacus  she  was  thoroughly 

1  Talmud  has  an  amusing  anecdote  in  this  connection.  When  still 
quite  a  child  she  was  taken  to  visit  a  Refuge  for  the  Deaf  and 
Dumb,  and  her  attendants  were  at  great  pains  to  explain  to  her  the 
condition  of  these  unfortunates. 

"I  will  make  them  hear  fast  enough,"  the  little  Princess  exclaimed. 
"Let  me  at  them  I" 

30 


versed,  although,  as  she  often  confessed  afterwards, 
she  had  absolutely  no  head  for  figures  and  pre- 
ferred counting  on  her  fingers  to  any  other  method 
of  computation.  To  her  dying  day  she  could  never 
master  the  number  of  finger-breadths  in  a  palm, 
nor  the  table  of  spans,  cubits  and  reeds.  Gaston 
Poteau  attributes  much  of  her  later  enthusiasm  for 
travel  to  her  utter  misconception  of  distances. 

In  the  higher  branches  of  culture  she  received  in- 
struction in  sarcophagus  painting,  mummy  gilding, 
stone  carving  and  papyrus  chewing,  as  well  as  in  the 
arts  of  perfumery,  cosmetics,  double-dying  and 
depilation,  palmistry,  chiropody  and  poisoning. 
She  was  a  finished  performer  on  the  lute,  the  three 
stringed  tanbur  and  the  zamr,  not  to  mention  the 
harp  and  the  dulcimer,  a  matchless  exponent  of  the 
dance,  both  sacred  and  profane,  and  of  course  an 
accomplished  camelwoman. 

Her  reading,  as  might  have  been  expected  from 
her  nature,  was  never  confined  to  manuscripts  es- 
pecially dedicated  to  her  sex  but  always  inclined  to 
more  masculine  subjects.  She  soon  tired  of  Sap- 
phira  and  her  Friends,  Three  little  Shulamites,  Little 
Mainim  Maidens  and  similar  works,  and  turned 
eagerly  to  the  boy  stories  of  battle  and  adventure 
with  Which  her  half-brothers  littered  the  nursery. 

31 


At  fifteen  she  talked  like  a  boy,  she  behaved  like 
a  boy,  she  often  dressed  like  a  boy,  she  could  pass 
anywhere  for  one. 

4 

Balkis  was  just  fifteen  years  of  age  when  she 
discovered  her  exact  relation  to  the  crown  of  Sheba 
and  the  precise  significance  of  the  presence  of  her 
four  older  half-brothers.  Hornblower  vividly 
describes  the  scene. 

"Until  her  fifteenth  year,"  he  says,  "Balkis  had 
been  kept  in  ignorance  of  her  close  connection  to 
the  throne,  very  largely  on  account  of  her  own 
supreme  indifference  to  the  history  of  her  country. 
Her  mother  she  could  not  remember ;  her  father  she 
saw  very  seldom,  and  then  only  as  Caliph  of  Marib, 
the  title  which  he  adopted  when  visiting  his  estates; 
her  half-brothers  avoided  her  like  the  plague  and 
never  discussed  family  matters  with  their  half- 
sister;  there  was  nothing  to  arouse  in  her  any 
suspicion  of  the  true  state  of  affairs. 

On  her  fifteenth  birthday,  however,  she  accident- 
ally came  across  a  cuneiform  table,  inscribed  on  a 
brick  which  had  strayed  from  her  oldest  half- 
brother's  historical  stack,  showing  a  list  of  the 
Kings  and  Queen  Consorts  of  Sheba  and  their 


progeny.    At  the  bottom  of  the  list  she  found  her 
name. 

'Hot  Stuff!'  she  exclaimed.  'Everybody  works 
but  Father/ 

Her  whole  attitude  towards  national  history 
changed  at  once.  She  summoned  her  tutors  and 
soundly  berated  them  for  concealing  these  vital 
statistics  from  her,  and  asked  a  hundred  and  one 
questions  concerning  the  ultimate  possibilities  of 
her  discovery.  At  the  end  of  the  interview,  in  spite 
of  serious  damage  to  several  members  of  her  suite, 
she  was  forced  to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  there 
had  never  been  a  Queen  of  Sheba  in  her  own  right. 
Her  comment  on  this  point  was  characteristic. 

'We  shall  change  all  that!'  she  announced. 

When,  at  great  personal  risk,  one  of  her  teachers 
ventured  to  point  out  to  her  that  in  any  case  she  was 
the  youngest  of  five  children  of  the  reigning 
sovereign,  and  consequently  outranked  by  four  half- 
brothers  each  one  of  whom  in  turn  would  take 
precedence  over  any  claims  she  might  advance, 
Balkis  burst  into  tears  and  smashed  the  disappoint- 
ing brick  into  a  thousand  fragments  over  the  un- 
fortunate man's  head.  She  retired,  finally,  to  brood 
over  her  cheerless  future  and  as  she  left  the  apart- 
ment she  was  heard  to  observe 

3  33 


'Eni,  Meni,  Maini,  Mo, 
Catch  a  brother  by  the  toe, 
If  he  cries  don't  let  him  go, 
Eni,  Meni,  Maini,  Mo !' 

But  as  so  often  happens  not  enough  importance 
was  attached  to  this  at  the  time." 


Balkis  retired  to  brood  over  her  situation,  but  not 
for  long.  And  if,  as  she  says,  she  had  none  of  her 
father's  cold-blooded  facility  for  getting  rid  of 
people,  she  nevertheless  gave  evidence  of  consider- 
able dexterity  in  the  face  of  emergency.  In  this 
case  she  brooded  for  three  days,  and  then  went 
forth  unobtrusively  and  murdered  her  four  half- 
brothers  one  by  one  in  the  order  of  seniority,  a 
delicate  touch  which  does  her  credit. 

While  Balkis  herself  is  quite  frank  concerning 
the  methods  which  she  employed  to  achieve  her  half- 
brothers'  and  her  own  ends,  respectively,  it  is  to 
Gorton  that  one  must  turn  for  a  full  account  of  this 
quadruple  homicide. 

"One  was  company,  she  decided,  five  a  crowd,"  he 
writes.  "The  four  intervening,  not  to  say  interfer- 
ing, Princes  must  perish.  No  sooner  said  than 
done. 

34 


Eni,  the  first  to  go,  she  disposed  of  by  insinuating 
herself  into  his  chamber  in  the  middle  of  the  night, 
armed  with  a  mallet  and  a  supply  of  cedar  tent  pegs 
with  which  she  proceeded  to  split  his  head  in  two. 
The  unfortunate  youth,  accustomed  though  he  was 
to  her  rough  and  tumble  ways,  could  make  nothing 
of  it  at  first. 

'Be  careful,'  he  warned  her.  'If  you  hit  me  like 
that  again  you'll  break  your  arm.' 

Seeing  that  she  persisted  in  her  attempts  he  ral- 
lied her  on  the  number  of  times,  judging  by  the 
sensations  which  he  was  experiencing,  that  she  was 
missing  her  aim  and  hitting  the  peg  not  on  its  head 
but  on  his  own,  and  twitted  her  on  the  proverbial 
inability  of  girls  to  drive  a  nail  home  with  any  de- 
gree of  accuracy.  To  which  she  replied  gaily  that 
a  miss  was  as  good  as  a  mile,  and  that  if  he  would 
only  keep  his  head  still  and  stop  wriggling  she 
would  have  a  better  chance.  The  three  younger 
brothers,  who  were  sleeping  in  the  same  room,  were 
convulsed  with  laughter  at  this  sally  and  came  and 
sat  at  the  foot  of  Eni's  bed  to  watch  the  fun. 

'Hit  him  again,  Balkis,'  they  kept  urging  her. 
'He's  just  shamming.' 

It  was  only  when  the  increasing  discomfort 
caused  by  the  foreign  substances  embedded  in  his 

35 


skull  began  to  irk  him  that  Eni  showed  any  signs 
of  alarm. 

'Have  a  heart!'  he  remonstrated  with  Balkis. 
'What  do  you  think  I  am,  a  human  pincushion?' 

But  it  was  already  too  late.  Life  was  fast  ebb- 
ing away  from  him  and,  after  a  few  hopeless 
attempts  to  pull  out  the  offending  pegs,  he  expired, 
presumably  in  great  pain,  to  the  huge  delight  of  the 
others  who  set  up  a  great  tan  tar ar a  over  the  event 
until  Balkis  roundly  boxed  their  ears  and  drove 
them  back  to  bed. 

'Don't  cheer,  boys/  she  commanded.  'The  poor 
devil  is  dying.' 

As  for  Eni,  she  piously  closed  his  eyes,  gave  a 
parting  thwack  at  a  protruding  peghead  here  and 
there  and  retired  to  her  own  apartment." 

With  the  oldest  brother  now  safely  out  of  the 
way  Balkis  was  free  to  turn  her  attentions  to  Meni. 

"In  the  case  of  the  second  Prince,"  Gorton  states, 
"she  resorted  to  more  subtle  means  of  destruction. 
The  uproarious  behavior  of  the  other  boys  on  the 
occasion  of  Eni's  demise  had  taught  her  that  in 
future  a  lesser  publicity  would  be  better  suited  to 
her  task,  since,  on  the  night  in  question,  the  pande- 
monium in  the  princely  bedchamber  had  almost 
aroused  the  attendants  sleeping  nearby. 

36 


She  therefore  adopted  the  policy  of  tiptoeing  into 
the  room  when  all  was  quiet  and  pouring  molten 
lead  into  Meni's  ears  as  he  lay  peacefully  slumber- 
ing. The  first  time  she  did  so  he  awoke  and  com- 
plained drowsily  that  she  was  tickling  him. 

'What  goes  on?'  he  asked  her. 

'God's  in  his  heaven,  all's  right  with  the  world,' 
she  replied. 

The  answer  seemed  to  satisfy  him,  and  during 
her  subsequent  visits  she  arranged  matters  so  well 
that  he  was  never  disturbed. 

She  continued  this  treatment  for  six  nights  in 
succession  and  by  the  seventh  morning  Meni  had 
become  so  topheavy  that  he  could  no  longer  lift  up 
his  head,  and  broke  his  neck  while  trying  vainly 
to  arise  from  his  bed. 

'Sleep,  pretty  creature,  sleep,'  Balkis  remarked 
when  she  went  in  to  look  at  him. 

She  was  now,  as  someone  has  said,  dormy  two." 

The  remaining  two  boys,  while  they  were  not 
averse  to  a  little  harmless  fun,  nevertheless  began 
to  suspect  at  this  point  that  their  enterprising  half- 
sister  might  have  designs  on  their  own  persons. 
They  took,  consequently,  to  hiding  from  her  in  out 
of  the  way  corners  of  the  palace  where  she  was  at 
great  pains  to  find  them,  and  placed  sentinels  at 

37 


their  doors  and  windows  during  the  night  whose 
duty  it  was  instantly  to  decapitate  anyone  presum- 
ing to  effect  an  entrance. 

This  resulted  in  the  accidental  slaughter  of 
Prince  Maini's  valet  and  in  the  prolongation  of  the 
boys'  existence  for  a  space,  at  the  expense  of  the 
peace  of  mind  of  everyone  in  the  palace  since  Balkis 
became  absolutely  unbearable  in  her  petulant  im- 
patience. But  she  persevered  in  her  efforts  and 
never  despaired,  and  in  the  end  her  tenacity  was 
rewarded. 

"It  had  originally  been  her  intention,"  Gorton 
continues,  "to  entice  Maini  into  a  game  of  Mummy, 
whereupon  she  proposed  to  gild  him  from  head  to 
foot  with  such  fatal  consequences  as  may  be  imag- 
ined, but  the  cautious  lad  persistently  eluded  her 
blandishments  so  that  she  had  to  abandon  this 
plan. 

His  very  caution,  however,  betrayed  him  at  the 
last.  For  having  retreated  one  afternoon  into  one 
of  the  more  remote  recesses  of  the  palace  grounds — 
a  sort  of  sunken  garden  for  exotic  plants  access  to 
which  was  afforded  by  a  single  entrance  cut  in  the 
high  encircling  wall — to  his  horror  he  looked  up  and 
saw  his  half-sister  standing  in  the  opening  and  smil- 
ing significantly  from  ear  to  ear. 

38 


'Alone  at  last!'  she  cried,  and  sprang  in  pursuit 
of  him. 

Over  borders  and  flower  beds,  through  shrubbery 
and  in  and  out  of  fountains  the  merry  chase  con- 
tinued, with  Balkis  forever  intervening  between 
himself  and  the  only  exit.  It  was  only  a  question 
of  hours.  Finally  in  the  farthest  angle  of  the  wall 
she  cornered  him,  lame,  exhausted  and  out  of 
breath,  and  seized  him  by  the  leg. 

'Peace  at  any  price  F  the  miserable  youth  gasped. 

'Eventually,  why  not  now?'  she  retorted,  and 
flung  him  headlong  into  a  thicket  of  the  deadly 
Giant  Sensitive  Plant 1  among  whose  enormous  pre- 
hensile leaves  he  was  forthwith  crushed  to  a  pulp. 

'Ain't  nature  wonderful!'  Balkis  exclaimed,  re- 
lapsing for  the  moment  into  the  vernacular." 

Of  them  all  only  little  Mo  survived,  flitting  about 
like  the  merry  tomtit  that  he  was.  After  all  the 
trouble  that  she  had  experienced  with  Maini,  Balkis 
made  short  work  of  her  youngest  half-brother. 

"She  conceived  the  brilliant  idea,"  Gorton  re- 
lates, "of  secreting  little  dried  up  particles  of 
sponge  in  his  favorite  cake  which  she  then  pro- 
ceeded to  feed  to  him  on  all  occasions,  interspersing 
these  tidbits  with  liberal  potations  of  camel's  milk 

1  Arbutus  Pithecanthropus  Erectus. 

39 


to  which  the  little  fellow  was  also  very  partial. 
Every  day  she  came  to  his  door  and  enquired  after 
his  health. 

'Is  it  well  with  the  child?'  she  would  ask. 

The  inevitable  finally  took  place. 

The  sponges  swelled  to  tremendous  size,  greatly 
distending  the  unhappy  boy's  gastronomic  appara- 
tus, until  on  a  bright  morning  in  June  he  exploded 
with  a  resounding  detonation  to  the  wonder  and 
concern  of  all  beholders. 

'The  young  soak!'  was  her  only  comment."  l 

Balkis  herself  says  of  all  this  that: 

"Perhaps  I  ought  not  to  have  done  these  things, 
but  those  who  really  love  me  will  forgive  me."  2 

She  was  now  apparently  heiress  of  Sheba. 

6 

She  was  not  a  day  too  early. 

For  fourteen  and  a  half  years,  ever  since  the  sud- 
den disappearance  of  Shimhi,  Jehaz  had  been 
steadily  ailing.  He  held  court  as  usual,  for  a  while 
he  visited  his  estates  from  time  to  time  to  inspect 
his  children  and  refresh  his  memory  as  to  their  out- 

1  Steinkopf  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  name  sponge  cake  is  traceable 
to  this  incident. 
'Girlhood,  vol.  59,  left  handed. 

40 


ward  appearance,  he  even  committed  a  murder  or 
two  in  moments  of  distemper,  but  more  out  of  force 
of  habit  than  any  keen  enjoyment  that  he  derived 
from  them.  The  old  zest  was  gone.  For  nine  years 
now  Jehaz  had  not  stirred  from  Marib.  His  hair 
which  had  turned  first  gray,  then  white,  had  ceased 
turning  at  all.  He  was  a  broken,  doddering,  de- 
cipient  old  man,  weary  and  ill  at  ease. 

"The  King  has  shot  his  bolt,"  they  said  of  him. 

The  real  fact  of  the  matter  was  that  the  ill-fated 
Jehaz  had  gone  peacefully  and  totally  insane. 
Only,  as  in  his  present  state  he  was  infinitely  more 
docile  and  tractable  than  he  had  ever  been  when 
merely  partially  out  of  his  head,  no  one  around 
him  realized  the  shocking  change  that  had  come 
over  him  in  recent  years.  However,  on  the  evening 
of  the  day  that  little  Mo  detonated  so  tragically, 
a  dreadful  occurrence  took  place  at  the  capital  which 
opened  men's  eyes  to  a  sense  of  the  situation. 

Jehaz  set  fire  to  Marib. 

Hornblower,  who  has  devoted  twenty-four  years 
of  his  life  to  a  study  of  the  next  twenty-four  hours 
in  Sheban  history,  gives  the  best  account  of  the 
catastrophe. 

"Along  with  much  other  tittle-tattle,"  he  writes, 
"concerning  the  lurid  hours  preceding  the  Queen's 

41 


accession,  it  has  often  been  asserted  that  the  great 
Marib  fire  was  started  by  a  camel  who  is  supposed 
inadvertently  to  have  kicked  over  a  lighted  candle 
in  a  pile  of  hay.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the 
truth. 

The  Marib  fire  was  started  by  the  King,  if  not  in 
person  then  at  his  instigation  and  with  his  full 
knowledge  and  consent,  and  in  this  attempt  to  fix 
the  blame  on  an  innocent  beast  of  burden,  if  indeed 
the  story  is  not  of  much  later,  and  probably  bor- 
rowed, origin,  one  can  only  see  an  effort  on  the  part 
of  some  well  meaning  chronicler  to  exonerate  his 
master. 

The  facts  are  these— 

Hornblower  then  proceeds  to  give  in  detail  the 
contemporary  sources  from  which  he  draws  his 
information,  extracts  from  the  notebooks  of  the 
royal  scribes  who  drew  up  the  necessary  orders, 
without  any  suspicion  apparently  of  their  true  im- 
port, with  itemized  lists  of  the  inflammable 
materials  gathered  together  in  various  parts  of  the 
city  for  days  in  advance,  and  sundry  comments 
made  by  prominent  citizens  as  to  the  probable  cause 
of  the  impending  celebration,  for  so  this  proposed 
civic  bonfire  seems  to  have  impressed  them. 

Hornblower  continues : 

42 


"The  conflagration  spread  with  appalling  rapid- 
ity, aided  no  doubt  by  the  fact  that  the  populace, 
wishing  to  show  their  appreciation  of  the  spec- 
tacle offered  them  and  enter  into  the  spirit  of 
the  occasion,  set  fire  themselves  to  a  number  of 
dwellings  which  might  otherwise  have  escaped  de- 
struction. 

So  far  so  good.  When  the  populace  of  the  out- 
lying slums,  however,  drunk  with  smoke  and  in  a 
playful  mood,  began  to  show  unmistakable  inten- 
tions of  advancing  upon  the  residential  section,  and 
even  upon  the  palace,  considerable  criticism  was  ex- 
pressed of  this  form  of  popular  entertainment. 
Who  had  ordered  the  fire — the  King?  Then  let 
him  stop  it.  Where  was  the  King  incidentally? 

But  that  was  the  question.    Where  was  the  King? 

A  hasty  search  revealed  nothing  as  to  his  where- 
abouts. The  King  was  not  in  his  counting  house, 
the  King  was  not  to  be  found  anywhere  in  the 
palace.  The  King  had  departed,  leaving  his  Cap- 
tains behind  him.  Shenanikin,  when  appealed  to, 
had  no  solution  to  offer. 

'What's  all  the  shouting  for?'  he  enquired. 

'Marib's  burning!'  he  was  told. 

'Throw  on  water,'  he  commanded,  'and  save  the 
women  and  children.' 

43 


'But  the  King?'  they  insisted. 

'God  save  the  King/  he  replied,  and  went  back 
to  bed.  .  .  . 

They  found  him  finally — on  the  roof  of  the 
palace,  seated  where  he  could  command  the 
best  view  of  the  burning  city,  playing  the  re- 
bob. 

'Ain't  it  a  grand  and  glorious  sight?  Tatya- 
ta-ta!'  he  chuckled  as  they  gathered  anxiously 
around  him. 

To  their  protestations  and  entreaties  he  turned  a 
deaf  ear. 

'Let  her  fry !'  he  ordered.  'Burn  on,  Marib,  and 
cursed  be  he,  and  for  that  matter  she,  who  first  cries 
'Hold,  enough!' 

The  King  was  obviously  quite  mad.  There  was 
nothing  for  it.  While  he  lived  no  one  but  he  could 
countermand  the  incendiary  royal  order,  and  it  was 
clear  that  he  had  not  the  slightest  intention  of  doing 
any  such  thing.  And  meanwhile  time,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  a  large  number  of  floating  cinders,  was  pass- 
ing. With  heavy  hearts  they  picked  him  up,  chair, 
rebab  and  all,  and  dropped  him  gently  over  the 
edge  of  the  parapet.  So  perished  Jehaz,  known 
subsequently  in  song  and  fable  as  the  Martyr 
King. 

44 


'I  only  regret  that  I  have  not  nine  lives  to 
lose  for  my  country!'  were  his  last  recorded 
words.1 

In  the  meantime  the  populace  had  been  quelled 
by  the  courageous  action  of  one  of  the  court  singers 
who,  with  great  presence  of  mind,  took  up  her  stand 
on  the  palace  steps  and  sang  all  nine  verses  of  Sheba 
the  Gem  of  Arabia,  the  national  anthem.  They 
returned  quietly  to  their  smouldering  homes,  and  so 
one  of  the  most  turbulent  and  eventful  evenings  in 
the  history  of  Marib  came  to  a  close." 


It  was  now  the  duty  of  the  Regent  to  summon  the 
King's  eldest  son  to  replace  his  father.  For  the 
second  time  that  night  Shenanikin  was  called  from 
his  slumbers  and  apprised  of  the  emergency.  Refer- 
ence having  been  made  to  the  catalogue  of  the 
King's  progeny,  suitable  messengers  on  swift 
camels,  in  the  persons  of  the  Royal  Heralds — 
Camel  King  at  Arms,  Marib  Pursuivant  and 
Hickory  Stick — were  appointed  to  bring  the  good 
news  from  Marib  to  Salhin. 

The  story  of  the  famous  ride  has  been  preserved 

1  Gorton  holds  to  the  disputed  theory  that  what  he  really  said  was 
"Wrap  me  up  in  my  Bedouin  jacket." 

45 


in  one  of  the  best  known  epics  in  all  Sheban  poetry. 
Says  the  ballad  in  part: 

"Listen  my  children  and  you  shall  hear 
Of  the  midnight  ride  of  the  cameleer, 
Ready  to  ride  and  spread  the  alarm 
Through  every  Sheban  village  and  farm 
That  the  King  had  most  grievously  come  to  harm. 
One  sprang  to  the  saddle,  and  two,  then  three, 
One  galloped,  two  galloped,  they  galloped  all  three; 
'On  your  toes,'  cried  the  watch,  as  the  gate  bolts  undrew, 
'Toes,'  echoed  the  wall  to  them  galloping  through ; 
Behind  shut  the  postern,  the  lights  sank  to  rest, 
And  into  the  midnight  they  galloped  abreast.  .   ." 

They  arrived  at  Salhin  in  the  early  morning  and 
demanded  to  see  Prince  Eni.1  As  may  be  imagined 
this  request  threw  the  palace  into  a  certain  confu- 
sion. When  the  envoys  persisted  on  being  con- 
fronted not  only  with  Prince  Eni  but  also  with  the 
Princes  Meni,  Maini,  and  Mo,  the  confusion  grew. 
No  one  dared  confess  that  the  four  brothers  had 
just  recently  come  to  violent  deaths. 

"Snap  out  of  it!"  the  messengers  kept  insisting. 
"Trot  out  your  Princes." 

It  was  Balkis  herself,  finally,  who  relieved  the 
delicate  tension  of  the  interview. 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  6010. 


"All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  Princes,"  she 
informed  them.  "There  aren't  any  more." 

Now  it  was  the  turn  of  the  Heralds  to  express 
surprise  and  indignation.  Their  leader,  Camel 
King  at  Arms,  was  loud  in  his  vituperations  against 
the  carelessness  of  the  palace  authorities. 

"What,  no  Princes!"  he  stormed.    "How  come?" 

Once  again  Balkis  intervened. 

"The  world  is  so  full  of  a  number  of  Kings!"  she 
remarked.  "What's  a  Prince  or  two  between 
friends?  My  hat's  in  the  ring." 

"But  the  State?"  they  objected. 

"I  am  the  State!"  she  retorted. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  so  many  commentators  go 
entirely  off  the  track  in  their  accounts  of  what 
transpired.  Losing  themselves  entirely  in  the  maze 
of  legends  surrounding  the  event  they  would  have 
one  believe  that  a  boy  was  substituted  for  the 
missing  Princes  and  that  Balkis,  Queen  of  Sheba, 
was  in  reality  a  man,  and  in  fact  never  existed  at 
all  in  her  own  person.  This  is  sheer  nonsense. 

A  boy  was  apparently  substituted,  it  is  true,  but 
that  boy  was  none  other  than  Balkis  herself,  dis- 
guised to  resemble  Eni.  This  was  all  the  more  easily 
accomplished  since  no  one  at  Marib,  or  in  the  entire 
kingdom  outside  of  Salhin  palace,  had  ever  seen  the 

47 


King's  sons  since  their  earliest  infancy,  and  of 
course  the  Heralds  were  only  too  ready  to  wink  at 
this  small  deception  in  order  to  bring  their  mission  to 
a  prompt  and  satisfactory  conclusion.  Hornblower 
entertainingly  describes  the  final  scene  at  Salhin. 

"Balkis,"  he  says,  "dressed  in  a  suit  of  Meni's 
clothes  in  which  she  looked  every  inch  a  Prince  and 
wearing  the  greater  part  of  his  jewelry,  could 
scarcely  contain  herself  for  joy.  This  was,  in  more 
ways  than  one,  the  crowning  moment  of  her  young 
life,  and  she  was  all  in  a  fever  of  impatience  to  be 
gone  upon  her  royal  way. 

'A  camel/  she  kept  demanding.  'My  kingdom 
for  a  camel — or  do  I  have  to  walk  a  mile  for  one?' 

They  brought  her  at  last  her  own  white  Bactrian, 
and  without  waiting  for  him  to  kneel  she  vaulted 
lightly  into  the  jeweled  saddle  and  put  spurs  to  the 
beast. 

Tor  Balkis — I  mean  Eni — and  Merry  Sheba!' 
she  cried.  'Let's  go !' 

A  grunting  of  camels,  a  parting  cheer,  and  they 
were  off,  hell  bent  for  coronation,  as  Gorton  some- 
what crudely  puts  it." 

So  the  caravan  sped,  like  a  bird  on  the  wing,  over 
the  dunes  to  Marib,  bearing  the  lass  who  was  born 
to  be  Queen.  .  .  . 

48 


CHAPTER  III 

POMPS  AND  CIRCUMSTANCES 


The  Heralds,  the  little  Prince — for  so  one  must 
call  the  new  sovereign  of  Sheba  temporarily — and 
the  long-legged  white  Bactrian  all  arrived  together 
in  a  heap  at  the  top  of  the  grand  staircase  in  the 
palace  at  Marib  on  the  following  noon. 

"So  this  is  Marib!"  l  the  Prince  was  heard  to  re- 
mark as  he  staggered  up  the  stairs. 

This  somewhat  unconventional  and  entirely  un- 
expected entrance  was  largely  due  to  the  early 
training  of  the  Bactrian  who,  having  been  ac- 
customed from  his  tenderest  infancy  to  ascend  stair- 
cases at  Salhin,  saw  nothing  incongruous  about 
repeating  the  feat  at  Marib,  all  staircases  being 
alike  to  him.  Unfortunately,  however,  this  stair- 
case was  not  like  any  other  which  he  had  hitherto 
experienced,  being  extremely  slippery  and  culmi- 
nating in  a  great  hall  of  mirrors  in  which  he  saw 
what  appeared  to  him  to  be  six  hundred  and  fifty- 
two  other  white  Bactrians  converging  upon  his 
person.  Whereupon  he  let  fly  with  all  four  legs 

1  Annal*  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7004. 
*  49 


at  once,  greatly  inconveniencing  the  Heralds,  and 
slid  unceremoniously  up  to  the  very  feet  of  Shen- 
anikin  who  was  awaiting  the  royal  arrival,  sur- 
rounded by  the  court. 

"Safe  at  home!"  said  the  latter.  "I  am  your 
uncle  Shenanikin." 

"Uncle  me  no  uncles,"  the  Prince  retorted. 
"Home  was  never  like  this!  You'll  have  to  wash 
your  steps.  Hello,  everybody!"  l 

The  ice,  let  alone  a  large  number  of  mirrors,  was 
broken.  The  court  smiled  at  this  impudent  prince- 
ling, sitting  astride  of  the  spread-eagled  camel  so 
disdainfully  chewing  his  cud;  the  court  grinned 
broadly  from  ear  to  ear;  the  court  burst  into 
hilarious  laughter. 

"Yo!"  they  shouted,  slapping  each  other  on  the 
thigh.  "A  camel  come  to  lodgment!" 

The  popularity  of  the  Prince  was  assured  from 
that  moment,  and,  before  many  hours  had  passed, 
all  Marib,  waiting  anxiously  to  learn  the  trend  of 
the  new  monarch's  possible  idiosyncracies,  was 
made  aware  of  his  frank,  outspoken,  unaffected 
temperament.  Vast  concourses  of  people  gathered 
before  the  approaches  of  the  palace,  singing  the 
Sheban  national  airs  and  clamoring  for  a  glimpse 


50 


of  him,  until  finally  he  made  his  appearance  at  a 
balcony  and  responded  to  the  frantic  ovations 
which  arose  to  greet  him. 

The  initial  public  utterance  of  the  supposed 
Prince  has  by  a  happy  chance  been  preserved  and 
deserves  to  be  quoted  in  eoctenso.1  Gorton  is  of  the 
opinion  that  it  was  prepared  by  the  Heralds,  who 
were  no  doubt  by  this  time  in  a  state  of  considerable 
trepidation,  and  waxes  facetious  over  what  he  is 
pleased  to  call  the  Prince's  "maiden  speech"  in  his 
customarily  flippant  manner;  but  one  prefers  to 
see  in  it  the  first  outpourings  of  the  girlish  heart 
which  must  have  been  fluttering  so  joyfully  under 
its  borrowed  trappings. 

"Dear  friends!"  the  Prince  cried,  amid  tumul- 
tuous if  somewhat  startled  applause.  "Shebans  all, 
countrymen,  my  Lords  and  ladies — lend  me  your 
cheers! 

Last  evening  at  the  base  of  Marib's  cupola, 
which  all  the  while  ran  floods  of  water,  great  Jehaz 
fell.  We  have  come  to  bury  Jehaz,  not  to  raise 
him.  So  much  for  Jehaz. 

If  you  have  fears,  prepare  to  shed  them  now,  for 
Eni  is  an  honorable  man,  yes  he  is.  I  have  neither 
fits  nor  starts,  nor  hasty  actions,  nor  sufferance  nor 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7118. 

51 


the  powerful  itch  to  spill  men's  blood.  I  only  go 
right  on  trying  to  do  my  bit  in  a  cheerful,  earnest 
way  and  every  night  I  ask  myself  the  question, 
Have  I  tightened  anybody's  corner  today  or  have 
I  not? 

I  thank  you  one  and  all.  My  father  thanks  you, 
my  mother  thanks  you,  I'm  sure.  My  brothers 
would  thank  you  if  they  were  present,  but  circum- 
stances over  which  they  lost  all  control  will  detain 
them  indefinitely,  I  fear.  However,  I  daresay  they 
are  with  us  in  spirit  on  this  great  occasion.  My 
sister  will  thank  you  in  a  few  days,  take  it  from 
me. 

God  save  Sheba! 

God  save  us  all!" 

One  can  hardly  imagine  the  Heralds  having  com- 
posed such  a  document,  Gorton  to  the  contrary. 


These  Heralds  seem  to  have  been  an  efficient, 
cool-headed,  cold-blooded  lot.  Their  position  was 
an  enormously  difficult  one  as  at  any  moment  some- 
body was  liable  to  discover  the  fraud  which  was 
being  perpetrated  on  the  kingdom  with  their  con- 
nivance. 


Nor  was  the  situation  improved  by  a  view  ob- 
tained of  the  Prince  by  several  of  the  more  gabby 
members  of  the  court  scratching  the  back  of  his 
neck  with  his  left  foot. 

"Verily,"  they  said  of  him  slyly.  "The  young 
Prince  contorts  himself  with  easy  grace.  There's 
a  reason.  Ask  Jehaz,  he  knows!" 

Fortunately  for  the  Heralds,  however,  the  rigid 
etiquette  of  court  functions  required  that  none  but 
themselves,  or  personages  of  their  own  choosing, 
should  attend  the  Heir  Apparent,  and  empowered 
them,  moreover,  to  fix  the  time  for  the  coronation. 
They  solved  the  delicate  problem  by  sending  at 
once  for  Sophonisba,  who  had  followed  her  young 
charge  to  Marib,  with  instructions  to  look  around 
her  right  away  and  choose  the  nearest  exit,  and  set 
the  ceremony  for  the  morrow. 

However,  the  night  passed  calmly  enough,  as 
Arabian  nights  went,  and  all  through  the  palace, 
when  morning  came,  not  a  creature  was  stirring, 
not  a  drum  was  heard,  not  a  funeral  note,  to  mar 
the  beginning  of  a  perfect  day.  As  for  Balkis,  she 
slumbered  soundly  and  peacefully,  presumably, 
with  her  chin  cuddled  on  her  feet  as  was  her  wont, 
while  Sophonisba  watched  and  sprayed  her  with 
sweet-smelling  lotions. 

53 


3 


At  noon  on  the  following  day  the  Heralds  pre- 
sented themselves  at  the  Prince's  apartments  to 
summon  him  to  the  Pantheon. 

"Look  who's  here!"  the  "camel-eater"  stationed 
at  the  door  exclaimed,  in  accordance  with  the 
customary  ritual  for  such  occasions. 

"The  Heralds,"  he  was  told. 

"What  do  you  mean,  Heralds?" 

"King  Eni's  Heralds,"  they  answered  with  great 
solemnity. 

"Three  men  in  the  same  boat!"  Marib  Poursui- 
vant  added,  which,  as  may  be  imagined,  was  not 
included  in  the  ritual. 

"Tell  that  to  the  sergeant,"  the  sentry  warned 
them.  "What's  the  good  word?" 

"Four  and  twenty  blackbirds  baked  in  a  pie," 
the  Heralds  informed  him,  and  the  doors  were 
thrown  open. 

Marib  Poursuivant,  as  was  his  privilege,  and  in 
fact  his  duty,  stepped  into  the  antechamber  and 
yawned  copiously  at  the  Prince,  which  while  it  may 
have  been  the  former  was  certainly  no  part  of  the 
latter. 

54 


"Tell  me  naught  in  mournful  slumbers,"  the 
Prince  advised  him. 

"There  comes  a  time  in  the  affairs  of  men  which 
taken  by  the  forelock  leads  almost  anywhere,"  he 
began  to  declaim  the  ancient  formula,  although 
slightly  inaccurately. 

"I'll  say  so!"  the  Prince  replied,  and  the  signal 
was  given. 

Down  the  grand  staircase  they  passed,  between 
bowing  ranks  of  now  properly  subdued  courtiers,  to 
the  sound  of  crashing  drums  and  deafening  cymbals. 
A  company  of  Sheban  guards  in  ivory  tunics,  fifty 
abreast,  every  man  of  whom  stood  nine  feet  high  in 
his  bare  skin,  opened  the  procession.  They  were 
known  as  the  Immortals,  from  the  fact  that  while 
they  surrendered  occasionally  they  never  died. 

The  Ministers  followed  hard  on  their  heels,  ac- 
companied by  their  scribes  and  scapegoats,  carry- 
ing each  the  symbol  of  his  office — the  Great  Seal  of 
Sheba,  a  somewhat  cumbersome  block  of  granite 
six  feet  square,  the  Pen  of  Statements,  which  was 
mightier  than  the  Sword  and  twice  as  long,  the 
Golden  Horn,  which  none  but  the  King  might  blow, 
the  Coat  of  Many  Collars,  the  Apothecaries' 
Ounce,  the  Widows'  Mite,  the  Baker's  Dozen  and 
the  King's  Ransom. 

55 


After  the  tumult  and  the  shouting  had  died,  due 
to  the  fact  that  three  of  the  Ministers  had  become 
entangled  in  each  other's  beards  and  fallen  helter- 
skelter  down  the  whole  length  of  the  stairs,  thereby 
temporarily  disrupting  the  line  of  march,  there 
appeared  in  turn  the  King's  Gossamer,  the  Royal 
Conifer,  the  King's  Porringer  and  Tanager,  the 
Architrave  of  Marib,  the  Royal  Calamity  Howler 
and  the  Keeper  of  the  King's  Quorum,  all  of  them 
in  their  robes  of  state  trimmed  with  pelf,  and  pre- 
ceded by  their  myrmidons,  psychopomps  and 
mamelukes. 

The  next  in  line  was  Shenanikin,  the  Regent, 
surrounded  by  his  janissaries  of  whom  he  seemed 
to  be  in  considerable  awe,  never,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  having  seen  them  all  together  in  one  place 
before, 

"I  don't  know  why  it  is,  but  they  follow  me 
around,  all  around,  all  around!"  he  kept  muttering 
to  himself,  nodding  his  head  from  right  to  left  and 
from  left  to  right,  a  habit  which  he  had  contracted 
from  much  poring  over  his  documents,  until  his 
attention  become  concentrated  on  the  fact  that  at 
the  last  moment,  in  the  hurry  of  preparation,  he 
had  forgotten  to  change  his  felt  slippers  for  some 
more  suitable  form  of  footgear;  whereupon  his 

56 


terror  of  the  janissaries  increased  to  such  propor- 
tions that  he  spent  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  trying 
vainly  to  run  away  from  them,  to  the  great  dis- 
comfort of  the  latter  who  were  not  accustomed  to 
such  strenuous  exercise. 

"And  so  my  day  was  utterly  ruined!"  the  good 
man  writes  in  his  Journal.1 

Behind  him  walked  the  Heralds,  and  every 
few  hundred  feet  Camel  King  at  Arms  raised  his 
right  hand  and  addressed  the  multitude. 

"Oh  yes,  oh  yes,  oh  yes!"  he  cried,  following  the 
long  established  custom  of  such  functions. 
"Believe  me,  it's  the  King." 

To  which  Hickory  Stick  was  forced  to 
reply : 

"Check!  Take  off  your  hat." 

So  with  various  delays,  interruptions  and  ac- 
cidents, inseparable  from  so  great  an  undertaking 
entered  into  in  such  haste,  the  solemn  procession 
went  forth  amid  gales  of  delighted  laughter  from 
the  spectators,  and  finally  in  the  midst  of  a  brilliant 
throng  of  two  thousand  turbaned  nobles,  seven 
hundred  and  fifty  dancing  girls  and  four  hundred 
and  seventy-five  astronomers,  magicians  and  ven- 
triloquists whose  duty  it  was  to  supplement  by  their 

1  Mirrors  of  Marib,  ch.  18,  p.  9. 

57 


art  any  deficiency  in  the  volume  of  cheers  which 
greeted  the  royal  person,  the  Prince  appeared. 

".  .  .  in  a  crystal  litter,"  Hornblower  says, 
"borne  aloft  by  three  hundred  stalwart  slaves  gilded 
from  tip  to  toe,  who  were  thus  condemned  to  almost 
certain  death  but  fought  among  themselves  for  the 
privilege,  nonetheless,  so  remunerative  was  the 
honor  considered  by  their  families.  The  poles  of 
the  litter  were  of  solid  ivory,  and  its  floor  and 
roof  made  of  sheets  of  jasper  inlaid  with  beryl. 

The  Prince  reclined  on  a  mountain  of  cushions 
stuffed  with  ostrich  feathers  and  strung  with  pearl 
braids  and  tassels,  clad  from  head  to  foot  in  a  loose 
fitting  garment  of  sapphires,  a  cloak  consisting 
entirely  of  peacock's  tails  trimmed  with  emeralds 
thrown  carelessly  about  his  recumbent  form.  On 
his  head  he  wore  a  diamond  turban  containing  the 
Seven  Great  Stone  Facets  of  Sheba;  he  was  shod  in 
slippers  of  silver  and  gloved  in  gauntlets  of  gold. 

In  this  comparatively  simple  costume,  for  he  had 
not  yet  assumed  the  full  regalia  of  kingship  which 
he  wore  on  the  return  journey  from  the  Pantheon, 
the  supposed  Eni  passed  to  his  coronation,  leaning 
down  occasionally  to  smile — and,  as  Gorton  insists, 
to  wink  at  the  faithful  Sophonisba  walking  along- 
side in  splendid  solitaires.  .  .  ." 

58 


And  so  let  her  pass,  Balkis  the  Tomboy,  in  her 
crystal  litter,  to  her  triumph  where  the  Crown  and 
Scepter  of  Sheba  awaited  her,  and  the  Orb  of 
State  which  she  playfully  sent  rolling  down  the 
aisle  at  the  close  of  the  ceremony  with  the  historic 
cry: 

"Remove  that  marble!"1 

4 

The  real  identity  of  the  King  might  have  re- 
mained undiscovered  indefinitely,  no  doubt,  had  it 
not  been  for  an  unexpected  mischance  which  befell 
at  his  very  first  meeting  with  his  Ministers  on  the 
following  morning.  On  what  infinitesimal  mana- 
vilins,  indeed,  do  the  greatest  episodes  in  history 
depend;  how  many  lives  have  hung  on  a  thread, 
necks  on  a  rope  and  reputations  on  a  breath! 
In  this  case  the  King's  incognito  hung  on  a 
button. 

The  occasion  is  graphically  described  by  Gorton, 
as  set  forth  below  with  certain  expurgations. 

"It  was  only  natural  perhaps,"  he  says,  "the  first 
time  that  she  appeared  alone  in  public,  that  is  to 
say  without  the  close  supervision  of  her  nurse  or  of 
the  Heralds,  that  the  disguised  Queen  should  make 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7232. 

59 


a  perfectly  natural  and  essentially  feminine  mis- 
take, carefully  rehearsed  though  she  undoubtedly 
had  been  in  the  various  requirements  of  deportment 
and  dress  which  she  must  observe. 

The  ceremonial  of  this  first  meeting  with  the 
Ministers  demanded  that  the  King  should  appear 
robed  in  the  Coat  of  Many  Collars,  a  very  gorgeous 
double-breasted  garment  adorned  with  tier  on  tier 
of  jeweled  ruffs,  gorgets  and  tuckers  and  fastened 
down  one  side  by  means  of  large  emerald  buttons. 
Matters  were  proceeding  smoothly,  and  the  con- 
clave following  its  customary  routine,  when, 
oppressed  by  the  heavy  mantle,  the  King  un- 
fastened it, 

and  allowed  it  to  hang  loosely  over  the  arms  of  the 
throne.  This  was  the  original  false  step  which  led 
to  ultimate  discovery. 

For  at  the  conclusion  of  the  ceremony,  when  it 
came  time  for  the  King  to  retire,  he  went  to  fasten 
the  mantle  up  again  and  was  unable  to  find  the 
buttons,  since  he  had  instinctively  folded  it  over 
the  wrong  way  and  was  feeling  for  them  on  the 
left  side,  womanlike,  whereas  they  were  of  course 
sewed  on  the  right,  as  all  men's  buttons  have  been 
from  time  immemorial.  But  even  this  incident 
might  have  passed  unnoticed  by  the  male  audience, 

60 


had  not  the  King  drawn  attention  to  his  predica- 
ment by  exclaiming  peevishly 

'Buttons,  buttons — where  are  the  buttons?' 

It  was  then  that  the  Keeper  of  the  King's  Ran- 
som— a  sour,  crabbed  old  functionary  who  was 
decapitated  a  few  hours  later,  incidentally — who 
had  been  eyeing  the  King  suspiciously  for  some 
time,  arose  in  his  place  and  pointed  an  accusing 
finger  at  the  monarch. 

'Behold!'  he  volleyed  and  thundered.  The 
King  should  button  to  the  right  of  him  but  he 
buttons  to  the  left  of  him.  Someone  has  blun- 
dered!' 

'  'Smatter  Pop?'  the  King  tried  to  pass  it  off  with 
a  nervous  laugh,  but  without  success. 

'The  fat's  out  of  the  bag!'  the  old  man  shouted, 
tearing  his  beard.  'I  mean,  the  cat's  in  the  fire — 
anyway  I  smell  a  rat!' 

'Where!'  the  King  screamed,  and  promptly 
fainted  dead  away. 

During  the   subsequent  efforts  to  revive  him, 

and  certain  uncon- 

trovertible     facts    became    evident    to    everyone 
present. 

'Let  us  return  to  our  buttons!'  Balkis  remarked 
when  she  finally  came  to  again." 

61 


The  discovery  of  the  true  state  of  affairs  natur- 
ally made  an  enormous  sensation  throughout  the 
palace  and  spread  like  wild-fire  around  the  town, 
in  whose  public  squares  the  news  was  proclaimed 
to  incredulous  crowds  by  the  Royal  Calamity 
Howler. 

"Queen  crowned  King!"  he  announced.  "Balkis 
betrayed,  balks  at  buttons!" 

Within  an  hour  all  the  citizens  of  Marib  were  in 
the  streets,  shouting  with  laughter  at  the  hoax  and 
purchasing  buttons  with  which  to  pelt  one  another.1 
Inside  the  palace  a  similar  hilarity  prevailed.  In 
all  directions  the  air  was  brazen  with  jests,  mostly 
of  an  extremely  scurrilous  and  utterly  unquotable 
nature,  at  the  expense  of  the  Ministers  who  had  been 
so  completely  deceived.  The  fact  that  the  entire 
court  had  participated  in  the  error  was  not  allowed 
to  detract  from  the  gaiety  of  the  occasion,  so 

1  Steinkopf  is  of  the  opinion  that  in  this  incident  may  be  seen  the 
origin  of  the  custom  of  throwing  confetti  in  public  thoroughfares 
at  carnival  time;  and  also  suggests  a  kinship,  supported  by  Bjorn, 
with  the  habit  of  hurling  rice  at  weddings — the  missiles  used  origin- 
ally having  been  buttons  and  the  act,  it  seems,  symbolizing  the 
wish  that  the  groom  might  always  know  which  side  his  bride  was 
buttoned  on. 

62 


much  so  that  several  of  these  unfortunate  officials 
were  on  the  point  of  sending  for  their  scape- 
goats. 

"You'll  get  my  goat  in  a  moment,"  one  of  them 
exclaimed.  "Make  a  butt  out  of  him!" 

"Does  he  butt  to  the  right  of  him,  or  does  he  butt 
to  the  left  of  him?"  some  wag  in  the  crowd  called 
out,  and  the  uproar  redoubled.1 

As  for  the  Heralds,  safe  from  all  attack  now 
that  the  coronation  was  over  and  the  new  monarch 
installed,  they  merely  sat  back  in  their  corners  and 
twiddled  their  thumbs. 

"Under  such  circumstances,"  they  blandly  in- 
formed everybody  who  cared  to  listen,  "travesty  is 
the  best  policy!"  2 

The  only  person  about  the  court  who  seemed  at 
all  inclined  to  take  the  matter  seriously  was 
Shenanikin.  It  had  finally  occurred  to  someone 
late  that  evening  that  the  Regent  should  be 
notified,  since  otherwise  he  was  as  liable  as  not  to 
continue  in  ignorance  of  the  status  quo  for  an  in- 
definite period,  so  engrossed  was  he  in  the  affairs 
of  state  that  he  seldom  found  time  to  occupy  him- 
self with  the  state  of  affairs;  and  a  deputation  was 

1  Talmud,  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  82. 
a  Ibid. 

63 


accordingly  despatched  to  wait  upon  him  in  his 
apartments  and  apprise  him  of  the  situation. 

The  best  account  of  the  interview  is  furnished  by 
Shenanikin  himself  in  his  Journal.1 

"Arose  betimes,"  he  writes  on  that  date,  "and 
toiled  all  day  at  my  scrivening,  with  but  fair  success 
so  vast  was  the  accumulation  of  complaints  from 
those  who  claimed  that  they  should  have  been 
invited  to  the  coronation,  and  many  of  them  justly 
too — I,  poor  wretch,  having  mislaid  their  names — 
but  I  did  lay  it  up  to  the  stupidity  of  my  scribes, 
God  forgive  me! 

And  so  early  to  bed,  having  no  heart  for  my 
stint,  when  there  came  a  great  concourse  of  people, 
both  men  and  women,  at  my  door,  clamoring  of  this 
and  of  that,  and  saying  that  the  King  was  become 
a  Queen,  which  at  first  I  would  not  believe,  answer- 
ing them  that  they  should  depart  and  leave  me  to 
my  slumbers  and  not  disturb  me  with  such  taradid- 
dles, since  I  deemed  it  improbable  that  so  surprising 
a  miracle  should  take  place.  But  they  insisted, 
beating  with  their  fists  upon  the  door  and  laughing 
among  themselves,  and  shouting — 

'Verily,  a  change  has  come  over  the  surface  of 
the  King.' 

1  Mirrors  of  Marib,  ch.  12,  p.  24. 

64 


Whereat  I  grew  exceedingly  embarrassed  and 
pulled  the  bed  clothes  up  over  my  head  and  would 
listen  no  longer  to  their  jesting,  and  after  a  while, 
I  do  not  know  how  long,  they  retired  to  continue 
their  merry-making  elsewhere.  Lay  late,  there- 
after, pondering  with  a  heavy  heart  over  the 
future  of  Sheba,  and  talking  to  myself  of  many 
things — of  carnages  and  Kings,  and  why  the  water 
they  bring  me  is  always  boiling  hot,  and  whether 
Queens  have  whims — and  dreading  tomorrow  when 
all  the  King's  horses  and  all  the  King's  men  will 
have  to  be  marked  all  over  again." 

The  whole  timorous,  bashful,  prim  soul  of  the 
man  cries  out  in  those  touching  lines  .  .  . 

6 

Balkis  *  herself  has  this  to  say  of  those  stirring 
hours : 

"I  am  very  young,  and  perhaps  in  a  few  though 
not  in  many  things,  inexperienced,  but  I  am  sure 
that  very  few  Queens  have  had  more  real  good  will 
and  more  real  desire  to  be  always  merry  and  bright 
than  I  have." 

Her  first  official  act  as  Queen  of  Sheba, 
prompted,  as  Gorton  insinuates,  by  Sophonisba  but 


1  Coronation,  vol.  52. 
5 


65 


nonetheless  creditable  and  far-seeing,  was  to  send 
for  Shenanikin.  He  came  quite  out  of  breath,  all 
at  sixes  and  sevens  of  the  morning,  as  Hornblower 
puts  it,  surrounded  once  more  by  his  janissaries  in 
case  his  sovereign  niece  should  be  ill  disposed,  and 
kissed  her  left  foot.  She  received  him  graciously, 
fed  him  some  of  his  own  skinless  prunes  in  a  lordly 
dish,  and  made  him  a  pretty  speech. 

"It  is  my  intention,"  she  said,  "to  get  rid  of  the 
other  Ministers  as  soon  as  possible,  for  I  want  men 
around  me  who  are  not  flat-heads,  which  most  of 
them  seem  to  be.  But  what  would  Sheba  be,  and  no 
Shenanikin?" 

Whereupon  he  kissed  her  right  foot,  helped  him- 
self to  another  prune  and  departed,  murmuring 
delightedly  as  he  did  so : 

"Verily,  the  favor  lasts!"1 

This  proved  to  be  one  of  the  wisest  acts  of  the 
Queen's  career.  With  Shenanikin  on  her  side,  and 
indeed  a  great  deal  of  the  time  at  her  side,  as  he 
was  from  that  day  forth,  Balkis  found  her  path 
paved  with  excellent  intuitions  and  her  throne  a  bed 
of  roses  from  which  every  thorn  had  been  removed. 

Not  that  she  remained  aloof  from  the  affairs  of 
government.  On  the  contrary,  the  new  sovereign 

1  Transom,  Eminent  Shebans,  ch.  16,  p.  9. 


showed  an  unending  zeal  and  a  tireless  interest  in 
every  last  detail  of  her  kingdom,  and  set  about  at 
once  to  investigate  all  its  departments,  asking  an 
infinity  of  questions  which  the  Ministers  were  quite 
often  at  a  loss  to  answer,  never  having  had  reason 
before  to  study  the  subject  so  closely.  Her  habit 
of  causing  ignorant  Ministers  to  be  decapitated  on 
the  spot  complicated  matters  still  more,  until  one  of 
them  made  the  happy  discovery  that  as  long  as  her 
questions  were  answered  the  Queen  was  perfectly 
satisfied,  quite  irrespective  of  the  accuracy  of  the 
statements  made  to  her,  her  own  ignorance  on  that 
score  being  as  great  as  theirs. 

The  Queen,  for  her  part,  was  overjoyed  with  the 
results  of  her  research,  and  kept  ponderous  tablets 
always  at  hand  upon  which  she  recorded  in  sublime 
good  faith  some  of  the  most  extraordinary  facts 
concerning  her  realm.  On  one  occasion  she  reports 
this  dialogue  with  her  Minister  of  Shipping  dur- 
ing the  course  of  an  interrogatory  on  nautical 
matters : 

"BALKIS:  What  do  you  mean  by  dead- 
reckoning? 

MY  MINISTER:  Counting  the  dead  sailors  after 
a  battle."  l 


1  Affairs  of  State,  vol.  16. 


67 


To  all  of  which  she  invariably  seems  to  have 
replied : 

"Isn't  that  interesting!  It's  so  wonderful  to  be  a 
man  and  know  all  about  things,  but  I'm  going  to 
learn  all  about  them  too,  if  I'm  spared." 

In  the  meantime  she  spared  neither  herself  nor 
her  associates,  and,  in  addition  to  the  inroads  on 
their  leisure  caused  by  her  insatiable  curiosity  con- 
cerning every  variety  of  unrelated  activity  she  also 
quite  heavily  taxed  their  ingenuity  by  insisting 
that  all  documents  be  referred  to  her  for  examina- 
tion prior  to  ratification;  a  course  which  incon- 
venienced some  of  the  Ministers  not  a  little,  since 
ordinarily  they  had  no  documents  to  be  examined, 
let  alone  ratified,  being  content  to  draw  their 
salaries  without  further  encumbering  the  Royal 
archives.  But  rather  than  incur  her  displeasure, 
they  sent  her  documents  by  the  wagon-load,  on 
brick,  marble  and  granite,  and  on  every  subject 
from  apiaries  to  zephyrs.  Balkis  herself  says  in 
her  diary: l 

"I  can  only  repeat  again  what  I  have  so  often 
said  before,  that  I  have  so  many  weighty  com- 
munications from  my  Ministers,  and  from  me  to 
them — perhaps  more  of  the  latter  even  than  the 

1  Affairs  of  State,  vol.  9,  left  handed. 

68 


former  as  they  really  seem  to  depend  on  my  sug- 
gestions which  of  course  I  am  only  too  glad  to  make 
if  I  can  be  of  any  real  help — and  I  get  so  many 
bricks  to  thumb-mark  every  day,  that  I  have  always 
a  very  great  deal  to  do.  And  the  worst  of  it  is,  I 
like  it!" 


As  may  be  imagined,  the  new  spirit  in  the  throne- 
room  was  not  without  its  reflection  in  the  whole 
physiognomy  of  the  palace.  Where  in  the  past  the 
court  had  walked  sourly  on  tenterhooks,  warily 
turning  corners  for  fear  of  running  into  the  insane 
old  King,  and  allowing  official  business  to  be  brick- 
yarded  by  scribes,  now  a  feeling  of  personal  security 
pervaded  the  windy  corridors,  an  atmosphere  of 
gaiety  brightened  the  daily  routine,  a  cheerful  bon- 
homie animated  a  scene  grown  suddenly  more  de- 
corous and  infinitely  more  decorative.  The  horrid 
old  monarch  and  all  his  horrid  old  men,  with  their 
recurrent  butcheries,  doles  and  mulligrubs,  were 
vanished  like  a  sigh  in  a  gale  of  wind,  and  here  in 
their  place  was  Balkis,  merry  and  blithe,  and  light 
as  a  feather,  and  fairly  brimming  over  with 
sprightly  ideas. 

69 


The  entire  personnel  of  the  court  underwent  a 
change.  The  ladies  in  waiting  were  chosen  for  their 
beauty  and  charm,  since,  as  Talmud  relates  in  his 
diaries,1  no  matter  how  beautiful  they  might  be 
they  could  not  hope  to  outshine  their  mistress, 
except  at  great  and  certainly  short-lived  personal 
risk ;  the  officials  were  selected  for  their  comeliness 
and  grace;  among  the  Ministers  not  one  survived 
who  could  not  successfully  conceal  his  age  and 
create  an  impression  of  youthful  fire  and  gallantry. 
White  hairs  were  abolished. 

"I  will  have  no  silver  threads  among  the  gold," 
Balkis  decreed.2  "Dye,  if  you  must,  your  old  gray 
heads!"  she  added,  cleverly  paraphrasing  the 
national  ballad.3 

Ambassadors  who  doddered,  or  spilled  their  food, 
or  suffered  from  gout,  were  sent  home  in  richly 
gilded  sarcophagi  as  a  warning  to  subsequent 
encumbents.  The  palace  was  redecorated  from 
cellar  to  roof  in  varying  shades  of  green  to  match 
the  Queen's  eyes  and  serve  as  a  background  for  her 
salamander  hair;  and  at  gala  functions,  of  which 
there  were  at  least  two  a  day,  green  was  the  pre- 

1  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  93. 
a  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7350. 
*  Barbarous  Riches. 

70 


dominant  note,  emerald  the  prevailing  jewel  and 
red  hair  the  favorite  head-dress. 

"The  court,"  to  quote  Talmud  again,  "when 
attired  to  greet  the  Queen,  resembled  nothing  so 
much  as  a  field  of  poppies  bowing  in  the 
wind 

The  sole  exception  to  these  personal  and  sartorial 
reforms  was  Shenanikin.  His  one  attempt  at  re- 
juvenation having  ended  in  an  unfortunate  accident 
to  his  beard,  as  a  result  of  which  the  latter  dis- 
played a  dirty  elephant's  breath  color  for  many 
weeks,  the  Queen  graciously  ordained  that  he  be 
permitted  to  retain  his  own  hair,  and  his  was  the 
only  bald  spot  to  be  seen  thereafter  about  the  court. 
In  other  respects,  however,  even  the  Regent  showed 
the  effects  of  the  changing  fashions  and  manners. 

Transom  tells  us  that :  2 

".  .  .  perhaps  more  than  any  other  circumstance, 
the  metamorphosis  of  Shenanikin  furnishes  an 
index  of  the  sumptuary  spirit  of  the  time.  His 
beard,  his  shining  pate  and  his  rotund  figure  he 
could  not  alter,  indeed,  but  he  did  change  his  baggy 
garments,  his  dilapidated  head-gear  and  his  felt 
slippers. 

1  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  98. 
3  Eminent  Shebans,  ch.  17,  p.  1. 

71 


The  latter  he  discarded  for  bright  red  high-heeled 
shoes  ornamented  with  large  green  bows.  His 
head-gear  he  replaced  with  fancy  turbans  adorned 
with  jeweled  aigrettes.  His  pantaloons  and  jackets 
he  had  pieced  together  from  the  remnants  of  the 
material  used  for  decorating  the  palace,  which  gave 
him  a  certain  mottled  but  not  unpleasing  appear- 
ance. He  looked  like  an  ancient  and  very  fat 
chameleon. 

But  the  climax  was  reached  when  the  enterpris- 
ing old  cocoon  transformed  himself  into  a  social 
butterfly,  gave  entertainments  which  were  the  talk 
of  the  town,  and  took  to  keeping  a  racing  camel 
stable !" 

8 

In  addition  to  the  Queen's  rigorous  enforcement 
of  court  etiquette,  two  of  her  innovations  deserve 
special  mention,  namely  her  inordinate  fondness  for 
cats  and  her  habit  of  holding  midnight  receptions  in 
her  sleeping  chamber. 

Concerning  the  cats,  Talmud1  states  that  her 
progress  through  the  palace  was  heralded  by  a 
chorus  of  mewing  which  drowned  out  the  sound  of 
her  own  singers,  and  the  noise  of  their  purring  when 

1  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  105. 

72 


OKBMffiKANISS 


they  arose  to  greet  her  was  like  unto  the  beating  of 
a  multitude  of  drums.  There  were  some  five 
hundred  of  them  of  all  sorts  and  descriptions,  two 
of  whom,  enormous  black  grimalkins  with  flaming 
green  eyes,  sat,  stood  and  walked  constantly  at  her 
side. 

As  for  the  midnight  receptions,  no  functions  so 
sumptuous  are  to  be  found  in  the  annals  of  any 
other  court.  Steinkopf,  who,  in  the  preparation  of 
his  chapters  on  the  origin  of  the  wake  as  a  social 
institution,  devoted  years  of  study  to  these  elabo- 
rate entertainments,  has  left  vivid  descriptions  of 
them  from  which  one  obtains  a  picture  of  surpass- 
ing grandeur  and  beauty.1 

One  hears  again  the  gentle  sighing  of  a  hundred 
instruments,  rising  and  falling  like  the  slender 
spray  of  fountains,  the  restrained  cadences  of  softly 
humming  choirs,  chanting  the  passing  hours  to  their 
rest,  the  golden  voices  of  the  minstrels  at  their 
balladry,  the  honied  flow  of  storied  epics;  one 
smells  anew  the  heavy  laden  fragrance  of  the 
gleaming  incense  braziers,  the  scented  repose  of 
the  moonlit  night,  distilled  through  countless  case- 
ments from  the  silvery  quiet  of  enchanted  gardens ; 
one  sees  once  more,  under  the  emerald  glow  of  a 

1  Qestern  und  Vorgestern,  chs.  5,  6,  7. 

73 


myriad  lamps  shaded  in  jade,  subdued  by  the 
drifting  mists  of  perfumed  vapors,  the  courtiers 
in  their  glittering  vestments  relaxed  upon  the 
cushioned  divans,  the  Queen's  ladies  disposed  in 
groups  of  reclining  loveliness,  shimmering  in  their 
gem  studded  head-dresses — Gorton  says  shivering, 
but  this  is  doubtless  a  typographical  error — the 
dancing  girls  and  jugglers  intent  upon  their 
mummery,  the  gilded  slaves  purveying  the  mani- 
fold tokens  of  their  ceaseless  ministry  .  .  . 

And  high  above  the  brilliant  assemblage — upon 
her  massive  bed  of  black  ivory  inlaid  with  rubies 
reached  by  a  flight  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  steps, 
supported  by  a  thousand  brocaded  pillows  and 
attended  by  her  fan  bearers  and  hand  lifters — the 
Queen,  clad  in  her  jeweled  cloak  of  peacock 
feathers,  discoursing  of  sundry  matters  with  chosen 
companions  summoned  for  the  purpose  to  her 
nearer  presence,  or  brooding  silently  over  the  pro- 
pounding of  some  recondite  question,  surrounded 
by  her  great  blinking  cats  .  .  . 

Such  is  the  picture  one  conjures  up  in  the  vast 
high-ceilinged  chamber,  around  the  monumental 
black  and  crimson  bed — a  picture  of  transcendent 
splendor  bathed  in  smaragdine  radiance,  mysterious 
and  cool — during  those  nights  of  the  early  years  of 

74 


the  reign;  nights  of  a  thousand  varying  delights 
that  came  to  a  close  under  a  dimly  auroral  sky, 
when  the  first  incipient  yawn  of  weariness  parting 
the  Queen's  lips  sent  the  guests  stealing  forth 
regretfully  to  their  own  abodes,  with  the  warning 
of  the  Royal  Disperser  ringing  in  their  ears : 

"The   Queen  has   yawned — the   Queen   is   not 
amused!" 


T5 


CHAPTER  IV 

BALKIS  IS  WILLING 


Seven  hundred  and  thirty  nights  passed. 

Balkis  was  seventeen,  and  at  the  crest  of  her 
rampageous  youth,  as  she  herself  says. 

Of  her  beauty  so  much  has  been  written,  so  much 
has  been  sung,  that  it  were  presumptuous  to 
attempt  anew  a  description  of  her  whose  face  it  was 
that  burst  a  thousand  ear  drums.  Rather  does  one 
turn  again  to  the  famous  picture  of  her  left  by 
Talmud.1 

"The  Queen,"  he  says,  "was  a  delicate  tint  made 
animate,  she  was  an  exquisite  aroma  come  to  life, 
she  was  a  strain  of  celestial  music  in  human  form. 
Her  slim  body  was  an  alabaster  song,  her  graceful 
limbs  an  ambient  fragrance,  her  countenance  an 
enduring  dawn.  Not  to  have  seen  her  was  to  have 
been  born  blind.  To  see  her  was  to  forget  the  sun, 
to  lose  all  knowledge  of  the  moon,  to  deny  the  ex- 
istence of  any  stars.  To  have  seen  her  and  be 
denied  the  renewal  of  that  sight  was  to  strangle  in 
darkness,  to  drown  in  shadows." 

1  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablets  126-127. 

76 


Her  nature  was  characterized  by  an  unappeasa- 
ble restlessness,  both  of  mind  and  body.  Gaston 
Poteau  says  that : 

"She  was  active  as  a  flea  and  full  of  nerves,  with 
a  je  ne  sais  quoi  outlook  on  life  which  kept  her  con- 
stantly on  the  move.  She  was  seldom  known  to 
have  both  feet  on  the  ground  at  once,  and  her 
tongue  was  worn  thin  as  a  serpent's  from  endless 
usage." 

From  other  sources  one  learns  that  she  was 
"agile  as  a  basketful  of  lizards  and  rumbustious  as 
a  village  fair,"  and  that  "her  gift  of  blateration  was 
utterly  untrammeled."  Her  mind  was  quite 
empty,  and  unprejudiced  by  instruction,  and  she 
found  room  in  it  for  all  manner  of  speculations. 
She  never  reasoned,  but  trusted  to  her  own  intuitive 
brashness.  She  talked,  not  at  all  wisely,  and  en- 
tirely too  much ;  she  suffered  chronically,  and  those 
about  her  likewise,  from  a  rush  of  words  to  the 
mouth,  which  flowed  forth  continuously  like  water 
out  of  a  neglected  spigot,  unaccompanied  by  any 
previous  ratiocination. 

"She  never  reigned  but  she  poured!"  someone 
once  said  of  her. 

77 


She  herself  states  that: * 

"Perhaps  many  people  will  say  that  I  am  in- 
quisitive, but  that  is  simply  because  they  do  not 
understand  me.  Quisitiveness  and  inquisitiveness 
— that's  almost  a  pun  isn't  it — are  two  very  dif- 
ferent things,  and  I  am  always  desperately  anxious 
to  learn,  and  very  serious  minded. 

I  think  I  can  truthfully  say  that  in  all  matters  I 
am  as  passionate  as  a  ripe  pomegranate,  in  a  per- 
fectly nice  way  of  course." 

Such,  in  appearance  and  temperament,  was 
Balkis  at  the  threshold  of  her  career,  or  as  Gorton 
puts  it — 

"She  was  a  beautifully  vacant  lot." 

3 

It  became  increasingly  patent  to  the  Ministers 
that  she  must  marry.  Aside  from  considerations  of 
state  which  made  this  course  eminently  desirable,  it 
also  strongly  recommended  itself  for  economic 
reasons.  Ever  since  the  accession  of  the  Queen  a 
tremendous  immigration  had  set  in  from  the  outly- 
ing districts  to  Marib  so  that  at  the  end  of  a  year  the 
villages  and  dairies  were  well-nigh  deserted,  and 
agriculture  at  a  standstill.  It  was  practically  im- 

1  Personal,  volume  12. 

78 


possible  to  keep  the  young  men  down  on  the  farms 
after  they  had  seen  Balkis.  During  the  second 
year  of  her  reign,  indeed,  not  a  single  wedding  took 
place  throughout  the  entire  kingdom  owing  to  the 
fact  that  every  eligible  swain  was  preening  him- 
self before  the  royal  presence  in  the  hope  of  attract- 
ing his  sovereign's  favor. 

And  if  any  further  incentive  had  been  necessary, 
the  Queen's  own  practice  of  flitting  from  balcony  to 
balcony  in  almost  any  attire  kissing  her  hand  at 
whosoever  might  be  passing  below,  thereby 
seriously  interfering  with  the  normal  progress  of 
traffic  in  the  vicinity  of  the  royal  domicile,  would 
have  been  sufficient  to  convince  those  in  authority 
that  some  definite  measures  must  be  taken  with 
regard  to  her  future. 

Balkis,  when  the  idea  was  tactfully  broached  to 
her,  was  all  for  it.1 

"Oh,  what  fun!"  she  exclaimed,  clapping  her  little 
hands  together,  and  promptly  tied  herself  in  a  true 
lover's  knot  from  which  she  was  extricated  only 
with  considerable  difficulty. 

"Your  Majesty  must  choose  a  Consort,"  they 
informed  her. 

"Oh,  do  I  have  to  choose?"  she  objected.    "I  hate 

1  Gorton,  Secret  Memoirs  of  the  Court  of  Sheba,  ch.  22,  p.  9. 

79 


choosing.  It's  like  ordering  things  to  eat,  it's  so 
much  easier  just  to  take  what's  put  before  you, 
don't  you  think?" 

Whatever  their  thoughts  might  have  been  on 
that  point,  they  explained  to  her  that  in  this  case, 
nevertheless,  she  must  express  a  preference  since  it 
was  a  serious  step  which  she  was  contemplating, 
involving  not  only  her  own  happiness  but  also  the 
welfare  of  Sheba. 

"Oh,  I  know!"  she  agreed  with  them.  "I  often 
think  that  marriage  is  perhaps  in  many  ways  the 
most  important  thing  in  life.  Of  course  it's  dif- 
ferent for  a  man — they  have  their  own  lives  to  live, 
and  so  many  outside  interests  and  all  that  sort  of 
thing — but  for  a  girl  it's  the  one  big  vital  fact  of 
her  existence  and  she  can't  be  too  careful,  if  you 
know  what  I  mean — don't  you  think  so?" 

Yes,  they  seemed  to  think  so,  and  it  was  ac- 
cordingly decided  that  the  necessary  pourparlers 
should  be  inaugurated  for  the  purpose  of  inviting 
suitable  offers  of  marriage  for  her  consideration. 

"They  have  been  talking  to  me  about  my  mar- 
riage," she  writes  in  her  diary  at  this  period,1  "and 
I  am  so  thrilled.  To  think  that  I  shall  soon  be  a 
mother,  and  it  seems  only  yesterday  that  I  was 

1  Personal,  vol.  17,  left  handed. 

80 


playing  with  my  dolls,  but,  of  course,  now  I  am  too 
old  for  dolls.  I  often  think  what  a  wonderful 
thing  it  is  the  way  time  flies,  and  now  that  the  day 
has  come  I  realize  more  and  more  what  a 
tremendous  thing  life  is! 

The  trouble  is  that  most  people  don't  think 
enough  about  the  important  things,  time,  and  space 
and  all  the  other  wonderful  things  all  around  one. 
There  are  books  that  tell  you  all  about  it,  and  they 
are  really  most  interesting  if  one  would  only  take 
time  to  really  study  them  seriously. 

Of  course  there  will  be  no  engagement  for  the 
present  as  I  want  to  look  them  all  over  very 
carefully  before  I  make  up  my  mind,  and  I  should 
not  want  to  make  any  final  promise  for  two  or 
even  three  weeks  at  the  very  earliest,  as  the  whole 
matter  must  be  gone  into  very  earnestly,  and  a 
Queen  must  always  think  of  her  people  and 
remember  that  while  one  hand  rocks  the  cradle  the 
other  rules  the  realm.  I  think  that  is  awfully  clever 
and  so  I  put  it  down  here  although  I  didn't  think 
of  it  myself.  I'm  not  quick  that  way,  but  of  course, 
it  takes  all  kinds  of  people  to  make  a  world  and 
we  can't  all  be  brilliant. 

One  doesn't  buy  a  pig  in  a  poke,  and  a  husband 
is  so  very  much  more  important  than  a  pig,  isn't 
*  81 


he?  As  I  have  said  before  I  often  feel  that  the 
reason  why  so  many  marriages  are  not  happy  is 
because  people  don't  think  about  it  enough  before- 
hand. I  read  somewhere  that  all  marriage  was  a 
gamble,  and  I  think  that  is  a  tremendous  saying." 
Quite  obviously,  Balkis  was  willing. 


The  news  of  her  matrimonial  inclinations  spread 
across  Arabia  and  into  neighboring  countries  with 
astonishing  rapidity,  and  in  a  very  short  time  every 
ruler,  potentate,  monarch  and  princeling  who  could 
afford  the  journey  was  on  his  way  to  Sheba  to  look 
at  the  Queen. 

The  King  of  Punt,  the  Emperor  of  Kush,  the 
Princes  of  Ophir,  the  Lord  of  Tarshish,  the  Rajah 
of  Pooh,  the  Sultan  of  Swat,  the  Caliph  of  Klout, 
the  Dey  of  Deys,  the  Wizard  of  Oz,  the  Emir  of 
Pish  and  the  Satrap  of  Tush — hakims,  maliks, 
khans,  hylegs,  sheiks  and  nuidirs — one  by  one, 
and  then  two  by  four,  and  finally  cheek  by  jowl, 
they  came  pouring  into  Marib  until  the  ranks  of 
citizenry  could  scarce  maintain  their  cheering. 

It  was  estimated  that  at  the  height  of  the  rush 
upwards  of  seven  hundred  aspirants  waited  in  line 
every  morning  outside  the  palace  gates.  And  this 

82 


did  not  include  the  great  quantity  of  embassies 
despatched  by  sovereigns  who  were  unable  to 
present  themselves  in  person  and  so  compromised, 
as  Gorton  says,  by  sending  in  persons  with 
presents.1 

Of  the  many  who  called,  so  Talmud  relates  in 
his  diaries,2  comparatively  few  were  chosen.  A 
rigid  inspection  was  in  force  at  the  outer  portals 
and  only  those  who  were  sufficiently  gifted  might 
hope  to  gain  further  admittance,  a  special  apart- 
ment being  set  aside  for  the  purpose  over  the  door 
of  which  was  written: 

"Give  up  all  gifts  here,  all  ye  who  enter." 

For  the  consolation  of  such  as  were  turned  away 
Balkis  graciously  consented  to  exhibit  herself  once 
a  day  at  the  great  balcony,  a  practice  which  she 
was  obliged  to  continue  by  popular  request,  in  spite 
of  the  large  number  of  suicides  which  followed 
daily  after  this  manifestation  of  her  forbidden 
charms. 

"The  face  that  kills/'  as  someone  termed  it. 

As  for  the  other  more  fortunate  ones,  the  same 

1  Even  the  aged  Shush  saw  fit  to  count  himself  among  the  latter, 
and  the  Queen's  reply  to  his  presumptuousness  has  become  historic. 

"Keep  your  little  grey  dome  in  the  West,"  she  sent  him  back 
word. 

a  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  200. 

83 


routine  was  observed  for  all.  Each  was  ushered 
into  the  audience  chamber  and  given  five  minutes  in 
which  to  state  his  claims  to  consideration  while 
Balkis  observed  him  closely  through  a  jeweled 
screen.  At  the  end  of  that  time  the  latter  was 
raised  and  the  suppliant  was  permitted  to  view  the 
Queen  for  a  brief  instant.  Many  of  them  are  re- 
ported to  have  dropped  dead  on  the  spot  at  the 
sight  of  so  much  loveliness. 

The  ones  who  survived  were  apprised  of  their 
fate  in  the  following  manner.  In  the  case  of  those 
she  disliked  Balkis  simply  pressed  a  button,  where- 
upon they  disappeared  forthwith  through  a  trap- 
door in  the  floor.  Those  on  the  other  hand  whom 
she  wished  to  honor  further  with  her  company 
received  a  marble  slab,  presentation  of  which  at  the 
entrance  entitled  them  to  participation  in  her  mid- 
night receptions,  on  which  were  inscribed  the  words, 
"Balkis,  long  may  she  reign!"  from  which  they 
became  known  as  Reign  Checks. 


No  complete  catalogue  of  her  innumerable  suitors 
is  necessary,  or  even  available,  but  among  them 
two  individuals,  stand  out  and  deserve  a  special 
mention. 

84 


The  first,  Pilaster  of  Pharos,  a  charming  youth 
in  his  very  early  twenties,  seems  to  have  made  an 
immediately  favorable  impression  on  the  Queen  by 
spending  his  entire  original  five  minutes  going 
about  the  audience  chamber  petting  her  cats.1 

"Your  time  is  up !"  Balkis  warned  him  when  the 
screen  was  lifted.2 

"High  time,  as  you  might  say,"  he  murmured. 
"How  about  my  number?" 

"You're  pretty  fresh,"  she  observed. 

"Fresh  every  hour,"  he  agreed.  "But  oh  me, 
oh  meow!" 

"What?" 

"I  wish  I  were  a  cat." 

"Why?" 

"Because  the  cat  came  back!" 

Needless  to  say  he  did  not  disappear  through  the 
floor,  the  Queen  having,  as  Gorton  puts  it,  kept  her 
trap  shut,  but  received  his  slab  and  went  on  his 
way  rejoicing. 

"Marbelous,  marbelous!"  he  exclaimed  as  he 
retired,  and  Balkis  tittered. 

1  Aside  from  that  he  appears  to  have  been  a  humorist.  He  had 
brought  along  a  large  quantity  of  grass  which  he  distributed  to  the 
delighted  animals,  remarking  as  he  did  so  that  he  realized  it  was 
catnip  and  tuck  with  him,  and  that  the  least  he  could  do  was  to 
•ay  it  with  flavors.  a  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7562. 

85 


Her  diaries  are  full  of  glowing  references  to 
him.1 

"Pilaster  is  a  very  dear  and  fetching  young 
man,"  she  writes  at  one  time,  "and  he  has  such  a 
sweet  way  of  expressing  himself.  His  mouth  is 
always  wide  open,  and  he  has  something  quite 
beautiful  to  say  whenever  he  gets  a  chance  to  speak, 
and  he  is  so  good  to  me,  you  really  have  no  idea! 
He  is  very  handsome,  and  such  a  good  spender,  and, 
I  expect,  frightfully  expensive  to  his  parents." 

Once  more  elsewhere  she  says  ".  .  .  he  is  so  very, 
very  fresh,  and  gets  so  gay  with  me  and  everything, 
and  always  has  some  bold,  delightfully  wicked 
thing  to  say,  even  at  breakfast.  He  really  is  so 
pleasant  to  have  about  the  house,  as  I  always  think 
that  a  man  who  is  obliging  at  breakfast  is  a  rare 
bird.  I  know  that  I'm  not  good  for  anything 
myself  until  I've  had  my  morning  chocolate,  but  I 
think  that  Pilaster  talks  more  then  than  at  any 
other  time.  Of  course  I'm  thinking  of  things  to 
say  as  soon  as  I've  finished  my  cup  so  that  it's  not 
as  though  I  were  not  doing  my  share/' 

From  another  entry  it  appears  that  ".  .  .  I  do 
so  love  him,  and  from  the  few  things  that  he  has 
said  I  feel  sure  that  he  means  business,  although  he 

Suitors,  vol.  165. 

86 


doesn't  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve,  he's  not  that 
kind.  But  a  woman  can  always  tell  somehow  when 
a  man  is  really  interested,  and  I  know  that  he  has 
been  trying  to  say  something  for  some  time.  I 
almost  dread  it  because  I  feel  that  it  will  put  an 
end  to  our  perfect  friendship,  but  of  course  what 
must  be  must  be." 

And  then  he  went  away. 

Pilaster  disappeared  one  morning  and  never 
came  back.  Talmud  relates  that  he  sold  all  his 
camels  and  went  to  Aphasia.  A  year  later  Balkis 
herself  says:1 

"That  low-down  pup  Pilaster,  who  used  to  hang 
around  here  so  much,  has  come  home.  They  tell 
me  his  hair  has  turned  completely  blue.  I  have 
heard  of  that  happening  before,  of  course,  but  never 
so  rapidly.  It  serves  him  right,  the  big  stiff!"  2 

6 

The  second  suitor,  Colossus  of  Rhodes,  was  an 
entirely  different  sort  of  person.  He  was  nine  feet 
high  and  extremely  hairy,  with  enormous  limbs  and 

Suitors,  vol.  316,  left  handed. 

"Gorton  has  a  cock  and  bull  story  to  the  effect  that  it  was  not 
Pilaster's  hair  that  turned  blue  but  his  face,  and  that  it  happened 
before  he  went  away  as  a  result  of  the  Queen's  incurable  talkative- 
ness, but  this  is  probably  just  a  myth. 

87 


a  voice  like  a  bull,  and  seems  unquestionably  to  have 
been  the  ugliest  creature  that  ever  lived.1 

He  created  a  sensation  on  the  occasion  of  his  first 
appearance  before  Balkis  by  dragging  ten  of  her 
unfortunate  guests  after  him  into  the  audience 
chamber  with  whom  he  proceeded  to  perform 
various  feats  of  juggling,  whereupon  he  tore  the 
jeweled  screen  from  its  hinges  and  bunched  his 
muscles  at  the  Queen.2 

"That's  the  kind  of  fellow  I  am/'  he  told  her. 
"I'm  a  tough  guy,  see?  Move  over." 

Balkis  presumably  did  so,  at  all  events  no  more 
applicants  were  admitted  that  day. 

"You're  frightening  poor  little  me,  you  big, 
rough  man!"  she  complained. 

"Lay  off  that  stuff,  kid,  lay  off  it,"  he  retorted. 
"Rub  me  the  wrong  way  and  I'm  mean,  see,  but 
treat  me  right  and  I'm  as  meek  as  a  lamb.  I'm  a 
rough  diamond,  I  am!" 

"And  you've  come  all  that  great  long  way  just 
to  see  me?"  she  asked  him.  "I'm  afraid  you'll  be 
terribly  disappointed!" 

"Don't  make  me  laugh!  You're  the  berries,  kid, 
and  I'm  for  you,  see?"  he  informed  her,  and  fetched 

1  Talmud  says  that  he  was  the  least  dressed  man  in  the  world. 
a  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7426. 

88 


OS  WOyLPE 


her  a  resounding  smack  on  the  shoulder  which 
nearly  knocked  her  flat. 

"My,  but  you're  strong!"  Balkis  sputtered. 

"Queen,"  he  exclaimed.    "You  said  a  mouthful!" 

Colossus  at  once  became  an  assiduous  caller  at 
the  palace  and  would  not  suffer  any  of  his  com- 
petitors to  show  their  faces  inside  the  doors.  Balkis 
herself  was  fascinated  by  him,  and  if  she  had  under- 
lined her  diary  where  Pilaster  was  concerned,  in  the 
case  of  Colossus  she  filled  it  with  capitals. 

"He  is  a  great,  gorgeous  ANIMAL,"  she  writes 
of  him.1  "There  is  something  so  primitive  about 
him  and  so  wholesome,  and  he  always  makes  me 
long  for  the  great  outdoors.  He  is  a  MAN'S 
MAN,  and  so  very  strong,  but  he  is  gentle  with 
dumb  beasts  and  with  little  children,  the  way  all 
really  strong  men  are.  Of  course  he  is  simply 
TERRIBLE  when  aroused. 

The  more  I  see  of  him  the  more  I  know  we  were 
simply  MADE  for  each  other,  and  the  more  I  love 
him.  He  is  my  soul's  TRUE  MATE.  There 
seems  to  be  something  WILD  in  my  nature  that 
responds  to  his.  It  is  so  exciting  being  with  him, 
and  he  is  so  fond  of  pulling  me  around  by  the  hair 
and  twisting  my  arms  and  legs  around.  I  don't 

Suitors,  vol.  279,  right  and  left  handed. 

89 


J  I  —HHJ    U      (V-=< 


think  he  has  ever  seen  a  double  jointed  person  be- 
fore, and  it  seems  to  amuse  him  so!  Sometimes  I 
feel  that  I  am  nothing  more  than  a  toy,  or  a  doll, 
to  him,  but  when  I  ask  him  about  it  he  just  laughs 
and  says  Some  doll,  kid,  some  doll. 

Sometimes  he  puts  his  great  hand  on  my  mouth 
and  won't  let  me  say  a  word,  but  just  sits  and 
STARES  at  me,  until  I  can't  stand  it  any  longer, 
but  simply  have  to  say  something.  But  I  love  those 
wonderful  silences,  as  I  always  think  that  between 
people  who  really  understand  each  other  words  are 
not  necessary;  and  Colossus  thinks  so  too,  because 
I  asked  him  and  he  said,  Now  you're  talking 
again!" 

From  all  accounts  Balkis  suffered  many  incon- 
veniences at  the  hands  of  Colossus  besides  the  hair 
pulling  and  general  acrobatics  of  his  more  playful 
moods. 

On  one  occasion  he  had  hardly  gone  from  her 
reception  when  he  came  climbing  through  the  win- 
dow again,  treading  on  her  cats  and  generally 
comporting  himself  like  a  gale  of  wind  in  a  thimble, 
for  the  purpose  of  taking  her  driving  with  him.1 

"Hey  there,  Balkis!"  he  called  to  her.  "How 
about  a  little  joy-ride?" 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  7639. 

90 


"But  Colossus — it's  so  late,"  she  objected. 
"Why,  the  idea!  Go  home  this  instant,  you  naughty 
boy!" 

"Cut  that  stuff!  Shank  of  the  evening,"  he  as- 
sured her.  "Come  out  before  I  pull  you  out!" 

"But  what  will  people  say?' 

"Leave  that  to  me,  see — you  know  me,  Bal  old 
kid!" 

And  so,  rather  than  make  a  scene,  Sophonisba 
bundled  her  up  in  emeralds,  and  Colossus  bundled 
her  down  in  a  jiffy  and  took  her  driving  through  the 
night  behind  his  spanking  team  of  black  drome- 
daries, but,  as  may  be  imagined,  the  escapade 
made  a  great  stir  in  the  more  prudish  circles  of  the 
court,  and  while  the  only  thing  that  Balkis  com- 
plained of  when  she  returned  was  cold  feet,  there 
were  many  who  seemed  to  have  cold  shoulders  over 
the  affair. 

But  in  spite  of  these  minor  incidents  matters  were 
progressing  very  favorably  and  the  election  of 
Colossus  was  practically  conceded. 

And  then  he  went  away. 

Colossus  disappeared  one  morning  and  never 
came  back.  Talmud  relates  that  he  bought  all  the 
camels  that  Pilaster  had  sold  and  went  to  Atlantis 
City.  Gorton  adds  that  he  left  a  brick  on  Balkis 

91 


before  departing  inscribed:     "The  only  possible 
rest  is  silence — goodbye,  girl,  I'm  through." 


Balkis  was  heartbroken. 

Pilaster  was  gone,  Colossus  was  gone.  The  pal- 
ace was  full  of  vacant  chairs. 

"I  can't  imagine  what's  biting  him,"  she  writes.1 
"Only  the  day  before  he  left  he  said,  You've  got 
me  going,  kid — and  now  everything  is  SPOILED 
and  my  life  is  a  GLOOM!" 

Her  Ministers,  while  they  were  not  heartbroken, 
were  nonetheless  extremely  perturbed,  for  in  ad- 
dition to  the  above  named  suitors  most  of  the  others 
also  were  going  as  fast  as  they  could.  They  arrived, 
they  looked  at  the  Queen,  they  visited  with  her  for  a 
while — and  then  they  never  came  back ! 

Quite  obviously,  Balkis  was  willing  but  the 
suitors  were  not. 

What  could  be  the  reason? 

Suitors,  vol.  806. 


CHAPTER  V 

SOLOMON,  HIRAM  AND  SHUSH 


One  is  compelled  to  turn  aside  at  this  point  for  a 
space  from  the  more  intimate  concerns  of  the  court 
of  Sheba,  leaving  the  Queen  and  her  Ministers  to 
grapple  with  the  departing  suitors,  as  Gorton  ex- 
presses it,  and  devote  a  few  words  to  more  serious 
international  matters,  maturing  beyond  her  borders 
under  the  leadership  of  the  three  most  fascinating 
personalities  in  all  history. 

Seldom  in  the  course  of  human  events  has  a  truly 
great  man  arisen  to  control  world  affairs  who  was 
not  condemned  by  his  own  genius  to  that  utter  lone- 
liness which  comes  of  enforced  association  with 
inferior  minds.  Seldom  has  the  concatenation  of 
earthly  circumstances  conspired  to  bring  together 
a  group  of  peers,  any  one  of  whom  alone  was  quali- 
fied to  illuminate  the  furthermost  limits  of  his  era. 
Seldom  has  such  a  group  consisted  of  so  scintil- 
lating a  triumvirate  of  luminaries  as  the  three 
contemporaries  who  adorn  the  brilliant  chronicle  of 
the  age  which  they  inspired. 

It  is  to  summon  up  all  the  material  pomps,  all  the 
intellectual  splendors,  all  the  artistic  glories,  all  the 
fresh  exuberance  and  spiritual  magnificence  of 

93 


the  unforgettable  Purple  Age  simply  to  recite  their 
names.  Shush  V  of  Ma'in — who  has  already  fig- 
ured in  these  pages,  and  who  was  perhaps  the  least 
important  of  the  three,  for  all  his  sinister  far-reach- 
ing influence — Solomon  I  of  Israel  and  Hiram 
VIII  of  Tyre.  Three  great  Kings  whose  deeds 
are  treasured  in  the  archives  of  posterity,  but  above 
all  three  intensely  human  perpetrators  of  glorious 
follies,  three  great  men  whose  weaknesses  were  but 
the  recreation  of  gigantic  natures,  three  merry 
monarchs  who  rolled  their  own,  as  someone  has 
said.1 

2 

Solomon  at  the  age  of  thirty-two  was  famous  for 
his  wit,  his  wardrobe  and  his  wives. 

Heimweh,  who,  in  spite  of  his  jaundiced  outlook 
and  often  odious  comparisons,  is  nevertheless  the 
one  outstanding  authority  on  the  great  characters 
of  the  period,  says  that: 

"Solomon  was  the  Beau  Brummell  of  his  day. 
He  was  an  entirely  tailor-made  man,  but  while  it 
only  took  nine  tailors  to  make  an  ordinary  mortal, 
it  took  nine  hundred  of  them  to  make  Solomon. 

He  possessed  three  thousand  suitings,  of  all 
styles  and  materials,  and  his  assembled  wardrobe 

1  Commonly  attributed  to  Dr.  Traprock. 

94 


filled  twenty-five  rooms  in  what  was  known  as  the 
Rainbow  Division  of  the  palace,  and  required  the 
constant  attention  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  valets. 
Aside  from  these  personal  attendants  he  had  at- 
tached to  his  household  a  corps  of  highly  trained 
scent  detectors,  whose  duty  it  was  to  trace  and 
utterly  destroy  all  lilies  of  the  field,  a  flower  which 
the  King  for  some  reason  could  not  abide,  claiming 
that  they  ruined  his  clothes." 

Concerning  his  other  foibles  and  extravagances, 
whole  chronicles  have  been  written.1 

He  had  an  absolute  mania  for  horses.  Heimweh, 
in  one  of  his  rare  accesses  of  humor,  says  that : 

"As  a  bridegroom  he  was  a  great  success,  but  as 
a  bridlegroom  he  had  no  equal."  2 

He  was  utterly  reckless  in  the  matter  of  cutting 
down  trees  and  at  one  time  he  had  as  many  as 
eighty  thousand  wood  cutters  at  work  in  Lebanon 
alone.3 

1  See  Hebron  Papyrus. 

2  In  the  palace  stables  he  maintained  forty  thousand  stalls  of  caples, 
prancers,  chargers,  bidets,  steeds,  curtals,  rouncies  and  coursers  for 
his  fourteen  hundred  chariots,  and  when  he  rode  forth  in  state  he 
was  accompanied  by  a  body-guard  of  twelve  thousand  cavalrymen. 
This  passion  of  his  for  mounts  and  equipages  was  much  criticised 
throughout  the  land,  the  humble  ass  and  the  modest  hinny  having 
hitherto  been  considered  adequate  enough  means  of  transportation, 
even  for  Kings. 

'Sackcloth    and    other    scientists    do    not    hesitate    to    blame    his 

95 


He  developed  a  perfect  craze  for  building. 
Heimweh  states  that: 

"When  he  was  not  erecting  palaces  for  his  wives 
with  the  timber  which  he  cut,  he  was  building  cities 
of  refuge  from  their  families.  All  Israel  during 
his  reign  was  a  vast  construction  yard,  and  from  a 
distance,  owing  to  the  innumerable  scaffoldings 
which  arose  above  it,  the  city  of  Jerusalem  re- 
sembled a  bunch  of  toothpicks." 

Even  Heimweh,  however,  does  not  seem  to  have 
grasped  the  significance  of  these  propensities.  The 
fact  is  that  Solomon  yearned  to  be  considered  a 
patron  of  the  arts.  Whether  from  a  desire  to  es- 
cape from  the  importunities  of  his  wives,  or  from  a 
genuine  love  of  the  beautiful,  he  determined  to  sur- 
round himself  with  all  of  the  most  cunning  artisans, 
workers  in  gold  and  in  silver,  in  brass,  in  iron,  in 
stone  and  in  timber. 

Whatever  his  motives,  he  filled  his  court  with 
brilliant  artists  and  his  courtyards  with  gorgeous 
stuffs,  which  his  fleets  went  far  and  wide  to  seek. 
With  all  due  respect  to  Sackcloth  and  Heimweh, 
he  made  possible  such  a  gathering  of  peerless  crafts- 
widespread  deforestation  for  the  changes  in  climate  which  gradually 
came  over  Palestine. 

"Solomon,"  one  of  them  remarks,  "might  well  have  said,  After  me 
the  drought!" 

96 


alqrrtBa  aiBi  yiav  B  lo  noitoirboiqai  B  ar  aJiaoqqO 
otf  amoo  §nivBd  iBnigho  adT     .§nbnr£q  taaaqmHsq  B  lo 
trroivildo  lo  aarwtaao  is^ls  tee^A  slbbtM  sitt  ni  ^d§il 
emsi^xs  arfo  Y^  bs^Ioods  ,li  bsisvooarb  orfw  ^ 

b^sh^^^£^£rI^  rfoniv/ 
brm  sonabBq  9iBi  riiiv/ 
airuroooB  aidT      .a^'m§fi  airorrjGV  srt^ 
ylnom  srli  .b'j^-6^8^  9mt 
aid  lo  a 


no  §nirf;tofo 
lo  al^a  9fij 
bawollol 


lo  ri99trQ  ari^  awodce  lartBq  ^aifi  adT 
babnuonua  ,rmlB2in^  of  ysniuol  i'3d  no  dhsM  moi'f 
aavig  bnLfoi§>[oBd  adT     .aiiBiDret/rn  brrB  aaldorr  iad  yd 
ai  naajjQ  adT     .abiavi^nuoo  riBdadS  B  lo  waiv  iBoiqyi  B 
tba^on  ad  Ilrw  vti  ,doidw  -^lamBo  tod  lo  omoa  yd  bab 
won  ,Y^anBV  "brtBlJadS"  awomBl  ad^  oj 

i 


Opposite  is  a  reproduction  of  a  very  rare  sample 
of  a  palimpsest  painting.  The  original  having  come  to 
light  in  the  Middle  Ages,  after  centuries  of  oblivion,  the 
monk  who  discovered  it,  shocked  by  the  extreme  nudity 
which  characterized  the  first  artist's  work,  proceeded, 
with  rare  patience  and  skill,  to  superimpose  clothing  on 
the  various  figures.  This  accounts  for  the  style  of 
costume  displayed,  the  monk  having  naturally  followed 
the  sartorial  standards  of  his  day. 

The  first  panel  shows  the  Queen  of  Sheba  setting 
out  from  Marib  on  her  journey  to  Jerusalem,  surrounded 
by  her  nobles  and  musicians.  The  background  gives 
a  typical  view  of  a  Sheban  countryside.  The  Queen  is 
preceded  by  some  of  her  camels,  which,  it  will  be  noted, 
belong  to  the  famous  "Shetland"  variety,  now  extinct. 

(See  also  page  124) 


li 


men  as  the  world  has  not  seen  before  or  since,  and 
flooded  his  age  with  the  radiance  of  a  magnificence 
which  has  never  been  surpassed.  Trees  will  grow 
again  on  Lebanon,  buildings  rise  and  wane,  but  the 
glory  that  was  Solomon  will  never  return. 


Along  with  his  other  manifold  possessions 
Solomon  seems  to  have  accumulated  seven  hundred 
wives,  every  one  of  whom  was  a  Queen.  Heimweh, 
with  his  usual  acerbity,  is  quick  to  point  out  that  he 
must  consequently,  at  a  conservative  estimate 
allowing  for  only  six  in  a  family,  have  had  some 
four  thousand  two  hundred  relatives-in-law.1 

"And  yet,"  the  crabbed  old  scholar  exclaims, 
"he  was  famous  for  his  wisdom."  2 

Certain  it  is  that  these  relatives  made  a  great 
nuisance  of  themselves,  inflicting  their  presence  on 
their  rich  son-in-law  in  and  out  of  season  and 
severely  draining  his  patience,  to  say  nothing  of  his 
treasury.3  Once  a  month  he  rounded  them  all  up 

Norton  says  9247. 

"Gaston  Poteau,  with  his  lighter  Gallic  touch,  simply  observes 
"quel  courage!" 

3  Some  of  his  fathers-in-law,  indeed,  turned  out  to  be  quite  dis- 
reputable and  became  a  great  source  of  mortification  to  the  fastidi- 
ous young  monarch — such  as  that  old  rake  of  a  Pharaoh,  for  in- 
stance, sprung  from  a  no  account  little  Lybian  family,  one  of  the 

7  97 


and  packed  them  home,  but  a  new  batch  arrived  al- 
most immediately  by  the  next  caravan,  having,  like 
certain  armies,  so  Heimweh  remarks : 

".  .  .  traveled  a  long  way  on  an  empty  stomach." 
Concerning  the  ladies  themselves,  beyond  the  fact 
that  they  were  ravenously  beautiful  as  one  chroni- 
cler puts  it,  hardly  anything  is  known.  Very  few  of 
their  names  even  have  survived,  Solomon  himself 
having  experienced  considerable  difficulty  in  re- 
membering them  in  his  own  day.  Psha  of  Persia, 
Panorama  of  Punt,  Ichneumon  of  Egypt,  Tchalk 
of  Magnesia,  Pilaff  of  Tripoli,  Ps'alt  of  Ammonia, 
here  and  there  a  title  remains,  as  for  the  rest  their 
names  are  legendary.  The  less  serious  members  of 
the  court  referred  to  them  always  as  the  Foreign 
Legion. 

That  they  greatly  annoyed  Solomon  by  their 
endless  bickering  is  common  knowledge,  however; 
and  the  circumstance,  moreover,  that  no  three  of 
them  spoke  the  same  language  gave  rise  to  his 
famous  epigram  to  the  effect  that  while  marriage 
was  a  lottery,  polygamy  was  a  polyglottery.  It  is 
no  secret,  also,  that  they  finally  succeeded  in  com- 

down-at-heel  remnants  of  the  decadent  twenty-first  dynasty — 
"un  petit  bourgeois"  as  Gaston  Poteau  calls  him — who  sprinkled 
snuff  on  his  food  and  habitually  filled  his  pockets  with  spoons. 

98 


pletely  ruining  his  digestion  by  forcing  upon  him 
all  manner  of  outlandish  dishes  which  he  was 
obliged  to  consume  for  fear  of  wounding  their 
national  pride,  until  in  the  end  he  revised  his  epi- 
gram to  bemoan  the  fact  that  polygamy  was  not 
only  a  polyglottery  but  also  a  polygluttony. 

"Too  many  cooks  spoil  the  betrothed,"  he  once 
sadly  confessed.1 

4 

Aside  from  that  Solomon  was  undoubtedly  the 
greatest  fop,  jack-a-dandy  and  prick-me  dainty  of 
his  time. 

Born  at  the  hour  of  midnight,  at  the  junction  of 
a  Monday  and  a  Tuesday,  the  child  was  both  fair  of 
face  and  full  of  grace,  and  already  in  his  early  man- 
hood he  had  formed  the  habit  of  spending  hours  of 
the  day  in  the  cheerful  contemplation  of  his  own 
features,  and  in  the  painstaking  adornment  of  his 
person.  Heimweh  states  that: 

"When  Solomon  was  arrayed  in  all  his  glory  he 
looked  like  a  Chinese  wedding  and  smelled  like  an 
explosion  in  a  perfumery  shop.  When  he  sat  on  his 
throne  he  scintillated  like  a  prism,  and  when  he 


1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  26,  v.  3. 


99 


moved  he  tinkled  all  over  like  a  crystal  chandelier 
in  a  draught. 

Every  hair  of  his  head,  and  also  of  his  beard,  be- 
sides being  numbered,  was  separately  curled,  and  a 
detachment  of  fifty-seven  barbers  were  employed 
for  this  purpose.  His  finger  nails  were  gilded,  and 
polished  with  meticulous  attention  every  morn- 
ing ;  each  of  his  eyebrows  was  parted  in  the  middle, 
and  his  lashes  were  plaited  in  minute  braids.  His 
body  was  painted  from  head  to  foot  prior  to  any 
function  to  match  the  raiment  selected  for  the  oc- 
casion, and  he  wore  large  rings  set  with  mirrors 
in  which  to  view  himself  from  time  to  time  and  de- 
tect any  imperfections  in  his  appearance." 

Of  his  luxurious  mode  of  life  fabulous  accounts 
have  been  handed  down.  Contemporary  sources 
indicate  that  in  the  Jerusalem  of  his  time  silver  was 
used  for  paving  the  streets,  and  that  the  motes  in 
the  sunbeams  consisted  entirely  of  gold  dust.  All 
of  his  household  and  table  utensils  were  of  gold, 
pins  being  the  only  article  in  use  made  of  silver.1 

Twelve  officials  were  responsible  for  the  furnish- 
ing of  the  royal  provender,  each  of  them  serving 

1A  fact  which  suggests  to  Steinkopf  the  origin  of  the  phrase 
pin  money,  together  with  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  world  wide 
superstition  regarding  the  picking  up  of  the  above  mentioned 
objects. 

100 


for  a  month,  the  others  merely  standing  around  and 
being  waited  on.  Seventy  thousand  burden  carriers 
were  at  his  beck  and  call  under  the  supervision  of 
four  thousand  butlers.  When  he  touched  his  bell 
six  hundred  boys  leaped  forward  to  learn  his  pleas- 
ure, and  a  contemporary  once  remarked  that  the 
sight  of  their  hands  outstretched  in  farewell  to  some 
departing  guest  was  as  a  grove  of  itching  palms. 

These  figures,  chosen  at  random,  give  one  a  vivid, 
though  to  be  sure  only  very  meager,  conception  of 
the  magnitude  of  Solomon's  domestic  establishment, 
and  do  not  of  course  include  the  retinues  of  his 
Consorts. 


Such,  briefly,  was  Solomon,  with  his  clothes  and 
his  fads,  his  wives,  his  horses  and  his  buildings. 
Except  for  the  sumptuous  flowering  of  the  arts 
which  matured  under  the  patronage  of  his  vanity, 
one  is  tempted  perhaps  to  ask  wherein  lay  his  claim 
to  everlasting  fame. 

And  at  once  one  is  confronted  with  one  of  the 
fundamental  characteristics  of  the  Purple  Age.  Its 
great  exponents  were  outwardly  either  rakes  or 
popinjays,  they  flaunted  personal  eccentricities  in 
the  face  of  an  amazed  world,  they  conducted  them- 

101 


selves  in  public  after  the  manner  of  buffoons. 
Shush,  on  the  surface,  was  merely  a  flatulent 
mountebank,  Solomon  a  painted  skipjack,  Hiram 
a  blustering  gadabout. 

Actually  each  of  them  possessed  qualities  which 
place  them  on  the  high  pedestals  of  history,  each  of 
them  contributed  conspicuously,  with  a  shrewdness 
of  vision  and  a  dignity  of  gesture  seldom  equaled, 
to  the  welfare  of  their  realms.  Shush  was  an  ex- 
perimenter, a  dreamer  of  splendid  dreams.  Hiram, 
as  will  be  shown,  was  an  organizer,  a  promoter  of 
progress. 

And  Solomon,  for  his  part,  was  steeped  in 
wisdom. 

The  first  indication  of  his  extraordinary  mental 
development  was  furnished  when  he  was  yet  a  mere 
youth.  He  was  seated  one  day  in  a  gilded  buffet 
munching  an  apple,  when  two  of  his  companions 
came  clamoring  around  him,  each  demanding  that 
he  be  given  the  remnant  of  the  fruit  which  the 
Prince  was  about  to  cast  aside.  The  situation  was 
a  delicate  one.  The  applicants  were  both  of  them 
older  and  stronger  than  Solomon,  and  any 
favoritism  on  his  side  could  only  result  in  personal 
injury  to  himself  at  the  hands  of  the  disappointed 
claimant.  The  question  might  well  have  perplexed 

102 


supposedly  wiser  heads,  but  not  so  with  Solomon. 
With  great  presence  of  mind  he  swallowed  the  dis- 
puted remnant,  remarking  in  the  vernacular  as  he 
did  so: 

"The  apple  a  core  it  should  not  got  yet!"  1 

The  fame  of  this  epoch  making  judgment  spread 
broadcast  over  the  land  and  also  into  neighboring 
countries,  and  people  came  from  near  and  far  to 
submit  all  manner  of  intricate  questions  to  him, 
every  one  of  which  he  solved  without  a  moment's 
hesitation. 

Solomon, although  greatly  embarrassed  at  first  by 
this  unforseen  result  of  his  nimble-wittedness,  was 
quick  to  appreciate,  nevertheless,  the  material  ad- 
vantages to  his  people  of  these  constant  pilgrimages 
to  his  court,  and  applied  himself  assiduously  to  the 
accumulation  of  useful  information.  One  wonders 
less  and  less  at  the  abnormalities  of  his  behavior 
when  one  considers  the  appalling  responsibility  un- 
der which  he  labored  until  his  death.  Many  a  man 
condemned  to  bear  the  burden  of  omniscience  which 
rested  on  his  shoulders  would  have  become  insuffer- 
able. Solomon  merely  became  infallible. 

At  the  height  of  his  career  his  wisdom  excelled 
that  of  all  nations,  including  the  Senegambian. 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  40,  v.  6. 

103 


Over  three  thousand  proverbs,  maxims,  epigrams 
and  bon  mots  were  credited  to  him.  He  was  the 
author  of  more  than  one  thousand  songs,  poems 
and  nursery  rhymes,  to  say  nothing  of  countless 
anecdotes,  fables  and  romances. 

"In  modern  times,"  Heimweh  remarks,  "his  roy- 
alties would  have  profited  him  infinitely  more  than 
his  royalty." 

He  was  an  accomplished  geologist,  botanist,  zo- 
ologist and  entomologist,  a  proficient  geographer, 
astronomer  and  necromancer,  a  finished  mathema- 
tician, physician  and  musician. 

6 

Hiram  VIII,  King  of  Tyre,  was  short,  fat,  bow- 
legged  and  cross-eyed.  His  face  was  shaped  like  a 
full  moon.  With  his  large  eyes,  hooked  nose,  pursed 
up  lips  and  fringe  of  whiskers  he  looked  exactly  like 
an  owl.  Having  been  born  to  the  purple  he  had 
gone  a  step  further  and  dyed  himself  the  same  color, 
a  fact  which  presumably  gave  its  name  originally 
to  his  age.  Once  a  week  he  immersed  himself  in 
steaming  vats  of  the  mixture,  with  the  result  that 
he  had  the  appearance  of  being  in  a  constant  state 
of  thundering  apoplexy. 

In  other  respects  he  had  none  of  Solomon's  per- 

104 


sonal  idiosyncracies.  He  dressed  simply  in  cloth 
of  gold  encrusted  with  emeralds,  wore  his  hair 
straight  back  from  his  forehead  in  thirty  braids 
tipped  with  crystal  knobs  in  the  customary  manner, 
and  sprinkled  himself  with  attar  of  juniper. 

He  was,  of  course,  excessively  hot-tempered,  and 
so  profane  did  he  become  during  his  accesses  of 
rage  that  it  is  alleged  by  contemporaries  that  the 
very  air  around  him  turned  blue.1  He  could 
not  abide  unpunctuality,  indecision  or  repetition. 
Heimweh  states  that  he  never  postponed  anything 
in  his  life.  The  sound  of  weeping  drove  him  mad, 
and  the  sight  of  a  melancholy  face  sent  him  into 
a  fury.  As  may  be  imagined,  the  brunt  of  his 
choler  fell  upon  his  unfortunate  wives  who  repeat- 
edly offended  his  sensibilities  and  provoked  his 
anger. 

Of  these  ladies,  eight  of  whom  in  turn  braved  the 
pitiless  blight  that  descended  upon  each  occupant 
of  his  throne,  only  one  survived  him,  and  that  she 
did  so  was  due  not  so  much  to  her  superiority  as  to 
the  King's  extreme  old  age  which  brought  his  career 
to  a  close  before  he  found  an  opportunity  of  putting 
an  end  to  her  own.  As  for  the  other  seven,  five  he 
caused  to  be  decapitated  because  they  presumed  to 

1  This  is  denied  by  many  authorities,  however. 

105 


complain  of  sundry  alliances  in  which  he  was  en- 
tangled, one  he  strangled  with  his  own  hands  for 
having  kept  him  waiting  five  minutes  one  morning, 
and  the  last  he  shipped  home  to  her  parents  for  the 
good  and  simple  reason  that  she  bored  him, 
her  heart  being  the  only  part  of  her  buried  at 
Tyre. 

In  addition  to  these  eight  Queens,  it  seems,  ac- 
cording to  Heimweh,  that : 

".  .  .  while  he  could  not  make  Consorts  of  them, 
he  nevertheless  consorted  with  a  large  number  of 
other  ladies,  which  gave  rise  to  the  saying  that 
Hiram  was  a  great  believer  in  consorted  action.  He 
may  be  said,  indeed,  to  have  gathered  every  rose- 
bud that  bloomed  in  his  extensive  gardens,  and 
earned  for  himself  the  proud  title  of  Husbandman 
of  his  People."  x 

That  in  spite  of  his  outward  appearance  and 
murderous  proclivities  Hiram  should  have  been  so 
multifariously  attractive  to  women  speaks  volumes 
for  his  personal  charm  and  customary  good  humor, 
and  justifies  the  appellation  of  Merry  Monarch 
which  was  universally  applied  to  him. 

1  For  those  desirous  of  further  information  on  this  subject,  Gaston 
Poteau's  delightful  chapters,  unfortunately  unsuited  to  a  work  of 
this  scope,  are  recommended. 

106 


Aside  from  that  Hiram  was  an  intensely  practi- 
cal, ceaselessly  industrious,  shrewdly  intelligent 
King.  He  preferred  common  sense  to  Solomon's 
wisdom,  and  had  no  use  for  the  experimental 
dreams  of  Shush  for  which  he  substituted  concrete 
and  marble  realities.  Under  his  energetic  and  far- 
seeing  rule  Tyre  reached  a  pinnacle  of  glory  and 
prosperity  which  remained  for  centuries  the  envy 
of  neighboring  chroniclers  who  were  constantly  pre- 
dicting her  downfall.  But  Hiram  had  built  on  too 
firm  a  foundation. 

And  this  foundation  was  shellfish.  The  precious 
mollusc  1  which  infested  the  shores  of  the  Tyrian 
Sea  and  from  which  was  extracted  and  compounded 
by  secret  processes  the  famous  purple  dye  for  which 
all  nations  of  the  earth  clamored.  Hiram  was  quick 
to  grasp  the  fundamental  issues  at  stake.  The 
prosperity  of  Tyre  depended  on  her  dye,  the  latter 
for  its  manufacture  on  a  monopoly  of  the  marine 
fauna  above  mentioned.  The  future  of  Tyre  was 
within  the  ocean.  Hiram  understood  that  she  must 
consequently  be  mistress  upon  its  surface. 

With  this  in  view  he  transformed  Old  Tyre  on 

1  Murex  rubricua. 

107 


the  mainland  into  an  impregnable  fortress  sur- 
rounded by  fifteen  miles  of  walls.  Then  he  turned 
his  attention  to  the  islands  situated  half  a  mile  out 
from  the  shore  and  consolidated  them  into  a  site  for 
his  New  Tyre  enclosing  an  area  two  and  a  half  miles 
in  circumference. 

"Verily,"  the  Tyrian  Envoy  to  the  court  of  David 
remarked  in  those  days,  "it  is  time  to  retire!"  1 

It  is  estimated  by  contemporaries  that  more  than 
thirty  thousand  workmen  were  drowned  during  the 
process,  but  the  seemingly  impossible  was  finally 
accomplished,  Hiram  himself  working  with  the  van- 
guard up  to  his  waist  in  water,  and  being  the  first 
to  step  from  island  to  island  as  the  dividing  chan- 
nels were  in  turn  abolished. 

"Tyre  has  gone  dry!"  he  exclaimed  joyfully  as 
the  last  spadeful  of  earth  was  put  in.2 

At  the  northern  extremity  of  the  new  territory 
thus  formed  he  established  the  Sidon  Harbor,  sev- 
enty thousand  square  yards  in  extent  protected  by 
gigantic  dykes.  At  the  southern  end  likewise  he 
provided  the  Egyptian  Harbor,  affording  a  safe 
anchorage  of  eighty  thousand  square  yards  guarded 
by  enormous  moles  and  a  breakwater  two  miles 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  8,  v.  19. 
8  Ibid.,  v.  22. 

108 


long;  the  two  harbors  being  connected  by  a  canal 
cut  through  the  center  of  the  island.  Sheshonk,  the 
reigning  Pharaoh,  was  so  impressed  by  these  opera- 
tions that  he  suggested  that  Hiram  join  him  in 
constructing  a  canal  from  the  Tyrian  Sea  to  the 
Red,  but  the  latter,  suspecting  the  promptings 
of  Sheba  in  this  offer,  sent  him  a  characteristic 
reply. 

"Shovel  your  own  canal,"  he  wrote.1 

These  works  once  completed  Hiram  set  the  whole 
populace  to  building  ships. 

"Float  a  fleet  a  week!"  was  his  incessant  slogan. 

Tyre  became  one  vast  teeming  ship-yard.  For 
a  year,  as  one  chronicler  puts  it,  the  sound  of  ham- 
mering filled  all  the  interstices  of  space  and  prog- 
ress through  the  streets  was  fraught  with  constant 
danger  from  the  flying  chips  that  darkened  the  sky. 
At  the  end  of  the  year  Tyre  possessed  the  greatest 
navy  the  world  has  ever  known,  whose  fleets  went 
forth: 

".  .  .  always  further  and  further  afloat,"  as 
Heimweh  says,  "exploring,  trading,  colonizing  and 
monopolizing." 

Such  was  the  nature  of  Hiram's  contribution  to 
the  progress  of  his  people,  and  of  all  his  titles  he 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  12,  v.  46. 

109 


was  fondest  of  that  which  a  grateful  nation  be- 
stowed upon  him,  calling  him  its  Sailor  King. 

8 

Which  of  the  trio  originated  the  great  conference 
which  took  place  at  Tyre  during  the  early  months 
of  the  third  year  of  the  reign  of  Balkis  is  not  easily 
determined  at  this  late  date.  Some  are  of  the  opin- 
ion that  it  was  Shush,  desirous  of  enlisting  the  sup- 
port of  his  allies  against  Sheba.  Others  lean  towards 
the  theory  that  the  meeting  was  proposed  by  Solo- 
mon for  the  purpose  of  establishing  a  naval  holiday 
to  be  observed  by  the  three  nations.  The  very 
slender  internal  evidence  available  all  points,  how- 
ever, to  the  fact  that  it  was  Hiram  who  issued  an 
invitation  to  Solomon  alone,  and  that  Shush  on 
being  advised  of  this  suspicious  circumstance 
promptly  invited  himself  also,  to  the  considerable 
annoyance  of  the  other  two. 

That  the  conference  was  held  at  Tyre  would  seem 
to  corroborate  this  view.  A  very  brief  fragment 
which  still  survives  of  a  letter  from  Hiram  to  Solo- 
mon, written  apparently  at  this  time,  likewise 
supports  the  latter. 

".  .  .  quiet  time  together,"  the  document 1  states, 

1  Archives  of  Tyre,  fragment  76. 

110 


"and  decide  on  these  matters  by  ourselves.  My 
personal  opinion  is  that  if  you  scratch  Sheshonk 
you'll  find  Sheba,  and  very  probably  Shush,  and 
our  little  plan  for  Ezion  will  knock  all  that  into  a 
turban.  .  .  ideal  opportunity  when  all  of  our  col- 
leagues are  rushing  off  to  Sheba  to  visit  that  Balkis 
girl.  Incidentally  I  hear  she  handed  the  brass 
banana  to  Shush.  I'd  go  and  see  her  myself  if  I 
were  not  so  very  much  occupied ;  as  for  you,  I  sup- 
pose you're  not  interested  in  assuming  any  further 
domestic  obligations,  and  I  don't  know  as  I  blame 
you.  .  .  you  simply  must  come  over.  ..." 

Whatever  the  rest  of  the  missive  may  have  con- 
tained, two  references  in  it — that  to  Sheshonk  and 
that  to  "our  little  plan  for  Ezion" — would  seem  to 
prove  quite  conclusively  the  purport  of  these  nego- 
tiations. Sheshonk,  as  has  already  been  seen,  was 
anxious  to  interest  Hiram  in  the  proposition  of  a 
canal  to  which  the  latter  was  opposed  for  political 
reasons.  On  the  other  hand,  access  to  the  Red  Sea 
for  his  fleets  could  not  fail  to  attract  him.  The 
result  was  undoubtedly  the  "little  plan  for 
Ezion." 

In  other  words,  Ezion-geber,  the  harbor  on  the 
Gulf  of  Akabah  at  the  head  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  the 
southernmost  city  of  Solomon's  dominions,  where 

111 


later  on  during  that  self-same  year  the  latter  con- 
structed a  powerful  fleet  from  materials  furnished 
by  Hiram. 

That  this  was  the  project  referred  to  in  the  letter 
there  can  be  no  question,  and  that  an  attempt  was 
made  to  put  it  into  effect  without  the  prior  knowl- 
edge of  Shush  is  also  perfectly  clear.  His  presence 
at  the  conference  indicates,  however,  that  he  got 
wind  of  the  scheme  and  made  use  of  it  to  fill  his  own 
sails;  and  the  fact  that  the  "plan  for  Ezion"  was  in 
full  operation  a  few  months  later,  without  any  op- 
position from  him,  makes  it  certain  that  he  received 
concessions  at  the  conclave  in  return  for  his 
acquiescence. 

Heimweh,  after  painstaking  researches,  states 
that: 

"The  exact  nature  of  these  concessions  is  diffi- 
cult to  establish,  the  treaty  concerning  them  having 
been  of  a  most  secret  character.  On  the  other  hand 
it  seems  fairly  evident  that  these  concessions  had  to 
do  with  naval  ratios  in  the  Red  Sea,  and  with  the 
granting  of  a  free  hand  to  Shush  in  all  matters 
pertaining  to  his  future  ventures  on  the  mainland 
of  Arabia.  That  in  this  was  foreshadowed  his  long- 
standing intention  of  attacking  Sheba  there  can 
have  been  no  doubt  in  anyone's  mind.  .  ." 


9 


At  all  events  the  conference  occurred,  amid  scenes 
of  unparalleled  splendor,  in  the  center  of  what  has 
always  subsequently  been  known  in  Minor  Asiatic 
history  as  the  Field  of  the  Purple  Cloth,  owing  to 
the  vast  quantities  of  this  priceless  material  used 
in  decorating  the  royal  gathering  place.  Here, 
under  a  glittering  canopy,  their  dazzling  persons 
ablaze  with  chromes  and  gems  and  costly  stuffs, 
they  met,  feasted  and  deliberated — Shush  the  Mo- 
rose, Solomon  the  Magnificent  and  Hiram  the 
Energetic — while  the  populace  gave  itself  over  to 
ceaseless  rejoicings  and  entertainments  in  honor  of 
their  multitudinous  retinues. 

For  two  days  they  devoted  their  attention  to  the 
Ezion  plan  and  to  the  necessary  concessions  to 
Shush,  by  which  the  fate  of  Sheba  was  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  sealed.  Then  for  three  weeks  more, 
so  Heimweh  asserts,  they  prolonged  their  discus- 
sion, speculating  heatedly  on  the  personality,  ap- 
pearance and  charms  of  her  whom  Hiram  always 
referred  to  as  "that  Balkis  girl."  Solomon,  in  fact, 
composed  one  of  his  most  famous  songs  in  praise  of 
her  during  that  period,  and  Hiram  decided  to  name 
a  ship  after  her — all  of  this,  as  was  well  understood 
8  113 


between  these  two  worthies,  being  done  to  annoy 
Shush  who  could  not  hear  the  name  of  Balkis 
spoken  without  having  an  attack  of  the  hiccoughs. 

And  then  an  extraordinary  thing  seems  to  have 
happened. 

A  messenger  arrived  from  Sheba  who  cast  a  letter 
down  before  Solomon,  whereupon,  smiling,  the  boy 
fell  dead  at  his  feet,  having  apparently  run  all  the 
way  from  Marib  to  Tyre  without  a  stop.1  In  any 
case  the  letter  is  authentic,  announcing  the  start- 
ling fact  that  Balkis  had  determined  to  visit 
Solomon: 

".  .  .  for   very   VERY   important   reasons"- 
and  was  even  now  on  her  way  to  his  court,  and 
appealing  to  him  under  the  laws  of  international 
hospitality  to  protect  her  journey. 

"Such  a  nerve  she  got  it  yet!"  Solomon  is  re- 
ported to  have  exclaimed.2 

But  the  opportunity  for  further  annoyance  of 
Shush  was  not  to  be  missed,  and  one  can  imagine  the 
merry  Hiram  roaring  at  his  colleague's  discom- 
fiture. For  while  he  himself  would  not  have  hesi- 
tated to  attack  Sheba  at  a  moment's  notice  if  such 

1  Gorton  has  one  of  his  usual  fabulous  tales  in  connection  with  this 
incident  to  the  effect  that  the  boy  had  actually  died  some  time  be- 
fore but  kept  on  running  from  force  of  habit. 

3  Archives  of  Tyre,  fragment  80. 

114 


action  had  seemed  profitable  to  him;  and  while, 
moreover,  both  he  and  Solomon  were  thoroughly 
aware  of  the  inner  meaning  of  the  treaty  just  con- 
cluded with  Shush,  nevertheless  here  was  an  unex- 
pected means  of  provoking  the  latter  and  depriving 
him,  temporarily  at  least,  of  the  fruits  of  his 
concessions  which  can  only  have  appealed  to  their 
sense  of  humor. 

The  treaty  of  course  must  stand ;  not  even  Shush, 
for  whom  treaties  were  usually  mere  scraps  of  papy- 
rus, would  have  dared  to  break  this  one  in  the 
presence  of  Tyre  and  Israel.  By  the  same  token 
the  laws  of  international  hospitality  were  absolutely 
inviolable.  Balkis  had  announced  her  departure  for 
Solomon's  court — she  was  already  his  guest  under 
the  law.  Her  person  was  sacred,  her  realm  unas- 
sailable ! 

"Balkis  comes  and  goes  in  safety,"  Solomon 
decreed. 

"I'll  say  she  does!"  Hiram  added. 

Shush  was  completely  outwitted. 

"Foiled  again!"  he  muttered,  and  retired  to  his 
own  tents  to  sulk.1 

So  the  great  conference  broke  up,  amid  gales  of 
laughter  from  Hiram.  .  .  . 

1  Archives  of  Tyre,  fragment  82. 

115 


CHAPTER  VI 


PILGRIM'S  PROGRESS 


One  of  the  greatest  controversies  arising  from  the 
many  perplexities  bequeathed  to  posterity  by  the 
reign  of  Balkis  has  raged  for  centuries  over 
the  question  of  the  real  motive  for  her  visit  to  Solo- 
mon, aside  from  her  natural  curiosity  to  see  with 
her  own  eyes  the  most  talked  of  man  in  Asia  Minor. 
A  controversy  which  has  engaged  the  attention  not 
only  of  scholars  and  historians,  but  of  men  in  all 
walks  of  life  in  every  period  of  the  world's  subse- 
quent history;  and  has  precipitated  by  far  the  larger 
portion  of  the  world's  bitterest  disputes — if  one  is 
to  accept  the  verdict  of  one  of  the  most  erudite 
investigators  of  all  time. 

Gossoon,  to  whom  reference  is  of  course  made,  in 
his  Underlying  Causes  of  History?  has  given  to 
society  the  fruit  of  his  exhaustive,  and,  as  he  him- 
self admits  in  his  preface,  exhausting  researches  into 
the  actual  wellsprings  of  the  great  schisms  which 
have  rent  mankind  at  various  times.  And  it  is  his 
unshakable  conviction  that  the  endless  and  acri- 
monious speculation  concerning  the  Queen's  voy- 

1 A  monumental  work  in  twenty-four  volumes  now  unfortunately 
out  of  print  but  obtainable  in  the  more  important  libraries. 

116 


age  is  to  be  found  at  the  roots  of  all  these  successive 
evils. 

According  to  Gossoon  l  ".  .  .  one  may  attribute 
to  this  one  factor,  to  cite  only  a  few  cases  at  random, 
the  merciless  enmity  of  Rome  against  Carthage,  the 
murder  of  Julius  Caesar,  the  advance  of  Attila  upon 
Western  Europe,  the  invasion  of  Britain  by  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror,  the  age-long  strife  between  the 
Guelphs  and  the  Ghibellines,  the  massacre  of  the 
Huguenots,  the  execution  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots, 
the  departure  of  the  Puritans  from  England,  the 
American  Revolution,  the  Reign  of  Terror,  Na- 
poleon's divorce  of  Josephine,  and  the  downfall  of 
at  least  nine  French  ministries.2 

For  generations  the  human  race  has  fought, 
burned  and  slaughtered  to  settle  this  atrabilious  dis- 
pute, and  the  end  is  not  yet.  .  .  ." 

Three  disinct  schools  of  opinion  had  sprung  into 
being  at  so  early  a  period  even  as  the  First  Crusade, 
and  did  much  to  disrupt  the  harmony  of  effort  of 
those  ventures,  until  finally  in  more  modern  times 
the  irreconcilable  differences  between  these  groups 
became  crystallized  into  definite  phrontisteries  of 
thought  which  demand  a  brief  analysis. 

'  Ch.  1,  p.  2. 

a  This  is  denied  by  French  authorities. 

117 


The  first  group,  known  as  the  Necessitarian 
School,  whose  greatest  exponent  is  unquestionably 
Hornblower,  hold  to  the  theory  that  Balkis  did  not 
undertake  the  journey  of  her  own  accord,  but  was 
sent  for  by  Solomon  and  coerced  into  convening 
with  him ;  a  belief  expressed  in  their  motto,  Neces- 
sity is  the  mother  of  conventions.  Among  the 
really  important  partisans  of  this  theory  one  finds 
Pontius  Pilate,  Ivan  the  Terrible,  Martin  Luther, 
Mary  de  Medici,  Napoleon,  Wagner,  Lord 
Gladstone,  Adelina  Patti  and  George  Washing- 
ton. 

The  second  category,  often  spoken  of  as  the 
Heroics,  has  numbered  among  its  disciples  such 
personalities  as  Confucius,  Julius  Caesar,  Brian 
Boru,  Lucrecia  Borgia,  Queen  Elizabeth,  Cardinal 
Richelieu,  Frederick  the  Great,  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  Bismarck,  Victor  Hugo,  Lord  Byron 
and  Florence  Nightingale. 

They,  on  their  side,  profess  to  find  in  the 
famous  journey  a  startling  proof  of  statesman- 
ship on  the  part  of  Balkis  and  her  advisers.  To 
their  minds  Balkis  was  a  heroine  and  Shenanikin  a 
paragon  of  diplomacy. 

118 


The  third  class,  usually  referred  to  as  the  Aboli- 
tionists, a  smaller  clique  of  which,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, Heimweh  is  the  acknowledged  master, 
flatly  deny  that  the  visit  to  Solomon  ever  took 
place ;  or,  if  they  grudgingly  admit  it  in  the  face  of 
scriptural  testimony,  it  is  only  to  assert  that  the 
visiting  Queen  was  not  Balkis  but  another.  Of 
the  more  outstanding  adherents  to  this  view  one 
may  cite  Cleopatra,  Charlemagne,  Abelard,  Dante, 
Christopher  Columbus,  Montezuma,  William  Tell, 
Charlotte  Corday,  Lord  Tennyson,  Tolstoi  and 
Queen  Victoria. 

3 

One  need  have  no  hesitation  whatever  in  stating 
once  and  for  all  that  all  three  of  these  schools  are 
hopelessly  in  error. 

One  has  only  to  go  to  Gaston  Poteau  for  the  ex- 
planation. What,  as  he  himself  points  out, 
Diogenes  really  spent  his  life  searching  for  and 
Archimedes  actually  discovered  when  he  sprang 
from  his  bath  shouting  "Eureka,"  Poteau  in  turn 
unraveled.  Without  for  a  moment  detracting 
from  Gossoon's  work,  the  truth  of  which  he  regret- 
fully admits,  the  Frenchman  utterly  refutes  Horn- 
blower,  Transom,  Heimweh  and  the  rest  of  them, 

119 


and  all  their  tenets,  and  proves  the  correctness  of 
his  deductions  beyond  peradventure.1 

Poteau  rests  his  case  on  the  testimony  of  Talmud, 
Shenanikin  and  Balkis  herself. 

In  Talmud's  diaries  of  the  period  under  con- 
sideration he  finds  the  following  instructive 
passage  :2 

"Verily,  the  Queen  suffers  exceedingly  from  loss 
of  sleep,  pondering  throughout  the  night  over  the 
questions  which  do  so  vex  her  mind.  It  is  her  wish 
to  visit  Solomon,  to  lay  these  perplexing  matters 
before  him,  and  while  I  do  not  believe  that  any 
lasting  good  will  come  of  it  I  do  encourage  her  in 
this  determination,  deeming  the  journey  may  be 
beneficial  to  her." 

This  would  seem  to  dispose  of  the  Necessitarian 
theory,  and,  if  anything,  supports  the  Heroic  point 
of  view.  Poteau,  however,  immediately  quotes  the 
following  significant  extract  from  Shenanikin: 

"Lay  late  this  morning,  thinking  of  this  and  of 
that,  and  in  particular  of  the  Queen's  dilemna, 
and  as  troublesome  a  problem  as  ever  I  did  see. 

1  That  the  results  of  his  enquiry  have  not  hitherto  been  more 
widely  accepted  is  merely  an  indication  of  the  fact  that  the  public 
mind  is  always  more  inclined  to  believe  obscurely  complicated  rumors 
than  simple,  unadorned  verities. 

a  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician,  tablet  372. 

120 


The  Queen  it  seems  is  minded  to  visit  Solomon  and 
seek  his  advice  on  this  question,  if  possibly  he  may 
have  wisdom  to  explain  wherein  she  hath  erred. 
And  she  would  have  me  tell  her  what  I  think  of 
this  plan,  which  I,  poor  wretch,  cannot  do,  having 
no  head  for  such  matters. 

All  day  thereafter  at  my  stint,  for  which  I  had 
no  zest  whatever,  and  many  come  interrupting  me 
with  foolish  prattle  of  what  the  Queen  should  do 
which  did  but  confuse  me.  And  so  home  and  to 
bed."  l 

One  is  at  a  loss  to  see  in  this  any  trace  of  the 
Heroics'  brilliant  diplomat,  any  vestige  of  a  heroic 
Queen  displaying  phenomenal  statesmanship  in  the 
face  of  international  complications — any  indica- 
tion, in  fact,  of  any  such  emergency.  There  is  no 
reference  here,  or  in  any  of  Shenanikin's  writings, 
to  Shush,  or  to  Tyre,  or  to  any  impending  danger 
to  Sheba  such  as  one  would  expect  from  the  Regent 
if  these  matters  had  ever  been  under  discussion. 
The  Heroics  are  quite  obviously  cheering  under  the 
wrong  window,  as  someone  has  said.2 

But  the  paragraphs  from  the  Queen's  own  diary 
which  Poteau  produces  are  even  more  conclusive.3 

1  Mirrors  of  Marib,  ch.  18,  p.  7. 

'Attributed  to  Pocahontas.  'Personal,  vol.  89,  left  handed. 

121 


"...  I  have  thought  VERY  deeply  about  this 
thing,"  she  says,  "and  I  have  decided  that  it  must 
be  due  to  some  little  fault  of  my  own.  We  all  have 
our  faults  of  course,  and  it  is  so  much  better  to 
recognize  them  and  try  to  get  the  better  of  them 
than  to  remain  blind  to  them,  as  this  only  leads  to 
unhappiness  and  often  prevents  one  from  fulfilling 
one's  highest  mission  in  life,  and  of  course  one's 
mission  in  life  is  a  very  important  thing. 

But  the  trouble  is  I  have  tried  and  tried  to  think 
of  a  fault  and  I  can't  find  any.  I  am  not  in  the 
least  conceited,  but  I  can't  help  realizing  that  I  am 
peculiar  that  way,  because  I  really  haven't  any 
faults,  and  I  always  think  that  false  modesty  is 
worse  in  many  ways  than  pride.  And  so  I  have 
decided  to  go  and  ask  Solomon  about  it,  since  he 
has  had  so  much  experience  and  is  really  TRE- 
MENDOUSLY clever.  I  thought  it  was  awfully 
cute  of  him  to  pretend  to  cut  the  baby  in  two  when 
the  mothers  were  quarreling  about  it  last  month, 
and  he  is  always  doing  bright  things  like  that,  so 
they  say. 

I  have  already  begun  to  put  down  questions  I 
want  to  ask  him  and  shall  add  to  them  a  little  every 
day  so  that  I  can  really  profit  by  my  visit,  and 
perhaps  I  can  help  him  with  some  suggestions.  I 


always  think  there  is  nothing  like  an  intelligent 
question  to  draw  a  person  out.  I  find  I  already 
have  four  hundred  and  sixty-two  of  them  on  my 
list,  and  of  course  before  I  get  to  Jerusalem  I'll 
have  a  great  many  MORE.  .  .  ." 

Can  anyone  seriously  maintain  that  the  forego- 
ing does  not  entirely  dispose  of  the  Necessitarians, 
the  Heroics,  and  the  Abolitionists  as  well,  at  one 
stroke  of  the  pen?  Balkis  went  to  Solomon  in 
person,  of  her  own  free  will,  and  for  reasons  far 
removed  certainly  from  affairs  of  state,  of  which 
latter  she  does  not  breathe  a  word,  she  who  was 
wont  to  fill  pages  with  both  hands  concerning  the 
most  minute  undertakings  of  her  realm.  Poteau 
makes  this  very  clear. 

"Ce  n'est  pas  pour  des  prunes"  he  writes  in  his 
witty  style,  "it  is  not  for  a  dish  of  prunes  that  the 
Queen  undertook  this  journey.  It  was  not  for 
reasons  of  state,  nor  was  it  to  take  the  air.  It  was 
to  consult  Solomon  on  a  personal  matter — une 
affaire  ires  delicate — concerning  her  own  charac- 
ter. What  was  the  nature  of  this  fault  which  she 
so  desired  to  discover,  the  basis  of  that  experience 
which  rendered  him  so  competent  to  enlighten  her? 

Why  did  la  petite  Balkis  run  at  once  to  him  who 
had  been  married  seven  hundred  times  .  .  ." 

123 


The  answer  "jumps  into  one's  eyes,"  as  he  ex- 
presses it.  Balkis  went  to  Solomon  to  ask  him  why 
it  was — in  his  opinion,  who  had  discovered  attrac- 
tions in  so  many  different  women — that  no  man 
could  be  found  who  was  willing  to  have  her  for  his 
wife. 


As  may  be  imagined,  the  Queen's  cortege  for  the 
journey  was  one  of  considerable  splendor,  and  in- 
volved antecedent  preparations  of  overwhelming 
magnitude.  From  contemporary  outside  sources 
one  learns  simply  that  she  came  to  Solomon— 

".  .  .  with  a  very  great  train,  with  camels  that 
bore  spices,  and  very  much  gold  and  precious 
stones." 

This  is  a  coldly  furnished  forth  description  of  the 
glittering  pageant  which  filled  her  courtyards  with 
the  motley  of  a  thousand  rainbows,  and  poured  out 
of  Marib  into  the  plain  beyond  for  three  days  and 
nights.  Never  before  perhaps,  and  certainly  never 
since,  has  Arabia  witnessed  such  a  procession  wind- 
ing across  its  golden  sands,  over  the  hills  and  far 
away. 

Two  such  processions,  for  of  this  host  one  part 
set  out  in  advance  of  the  other  and  proceeded  by 

124 


•BiiJODBni  niBtisO     .nrelBSiml. 
t§ho  adl  3rM  9  >oa  sift  to  Irrsrn 

•-jjj^ft  silt  §nomA       .yBaiBsd  moil  bezoqmoD 
9fft  to  bB9rf  srtt  Jii  gnibh  (r£daidA  bs^orr  sd  fliw  bo. 
rri  bnB  <2fiBtor8rjm  srft  ri^tw  §ni879vnoo  f§og,BM  ,:h, 

gnirisuq  i^HairlA  ,bmroi§9*rol  M§n  sri^ 
ri^  olrriW     .lo^iaiv  IB^OI  srf^  isaig  crt 

389nJ'  t£    'lO    5lv. 

noi.lij  3B  si 

Iii/1  onBd-GTBjio  B  bsvTsado  ad  llr//  ^BV  1  1  igbnlJ 

srLt  morfwlo  n«  rtomojc: 

baB  rnoos  bdl§nim  erfj  id^UBo  ylfqqBd  ^isv  ^Bfl 
-ro^Bfn  lisrt  j  b9v/  i'  989x11  doidw  xlj  I 

rioimqo  sri  KiBlorloa  9mo8     .,?. 

woi  ^aoil  9rfl  ni 
bn  oriB^  lo  ^aoi/g  9di  luo 

ar  isbtrjoda  /tol  isd  §nid  voi  doBd  odJ  nf 

:  3m  ax  sirivt  tod 


^  o 
<   z 

°  a 
Is 


In  this  panel  the  Queen  is  shown  arriving  at  the 
gates  of  Jerusalem.  Certain  inaccuracies  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  scene  prove  that  the  original  painting  was 
composed  from  hearsay.  Among  the  figures  repre- 
sented will  be  noted  Abishai,  riding  at  the  head  of  the 
escort,  Magog,  conversing  with  the  musicians,  and  in 
the  right  foreground,  Ahishar  pushing  Benaiah  forward 
to  greet  the  royal  visitor.  While  the  picture  is  obvi- 
ously not  the  work  of  an  eyewitness  of  the  event, 
nevertheless  the  accurate  rendition  of  the  fortifications 
of  Jerusalem  marks  it  as  contemporary. 

Under  the  gateway  will  be  observed  a  charabanc  full 
of  Solomon's  wives,  in  the  depiction  of  whom  the  artist 
has  very  happily  caught  the  mingled  scorn  and  amaze- 
ment with  which  these  ladies  viewed  their  master's  royal 
guest.  Some  scholars  are  of  the  opinion  that  the  two 
Queens  in  the  front  row  facing  Balkis  are  Ichneumon 
pointing  out  the  guest  of  Panorama,  and  that  the  lady 
in  the  back  row  scratching  her  left  shoulder  is  Pilaff, 
but  this  is  mere  conjecture. 

(See  also  page  96) 


<  z 

o  jj 

6  3 

5  o 

3  u 


land  up  the  coast  to  Ezion-geber,  there  to  await  the 
Queen.  This  caravan,  comprising  five  hundred 
camels  and  several  hundred  mules  guarded  by  three 
thousand  soldiers  of  all  arms,  carried  with  it  noth- 
ing but  the  Queen's  wardrobe  and  the  bulk  of  her 
personal  paraphernalia,  contained  in  some  two 
thousand  pieces  of  baggage.1 

The  other  section,  which  was  infinitely  more 
gorgeously  caparisoned  and  more  richly  freighted 
than  the  rest,  included  the  Queen's  personal  suite, 
attendants  and  scribes,  the  retainers  attached  to 
Sophonisba,  who  of  course  followed  her  royal  mis- 
tress, and  Balkis  herself;  an  assemblage  of  several 
hundred  personages,  satellites  and  minions  escorted 
by  the  entire  Sheban  Guards  Brigade.  Poteau 
describes  the  passage  of  this  cavalcade  as 
follows : 

"The  line  of  march  was  headed  by  the  Heralds, 
mounted  on  brindled  dromedaries  and  supported 
by  three  companies  of  Guards.  After  them  in 
single  file  came  the  officials  selected  to  constitute 
the  Queen's  staff,  surrounded  by  their  slaves,  and 
riding  in  brilliantly  ornamented  litters  covered 

1For  feminine  students  of  the  subject,  Poteau's  detailed  para- 
graphs covering  the  list  of  these  sartorial  impedimenta  will  be 
found  of  engrossing  interest. 

125 


with  cloth  of  gold  to  protect  them  from  the  stains 
of  travel. 

There  next  appeared  another  company  of 
Guards,  especially  detailed  to  watch  over  the  ten 
gilded  cages  containing  the  Queen's  cats,  and  pre- 
serve order  in  the  twenty  tanks  of  black  goldfish 
from  which  these  felines  were  fed,  an  extremely 
arduous  task  owing  to  the  peculiar  ferocity  of  this 
breed  of  the  ichthyomorphic  species.1  The  rear  of 
this  subdivision  was  occupied  by  the  royal  servants, 
hair-dressers  and  manicurists,  under  the  immediate 
supervision  of  Sophonisba,  and  contained,  besides, 
the  Queen's  ivory  bath  and  the  seventy-five  white 
she-asses  who  provided  the  milk  in  which  she 
immersed  herself  daily  in  that  commodious 
receptacle. 

After  these,  in  her  jeweled  litter  of  state — fitted 
for  the  occasion  with  jade  wheels  rimmed  with  gold 
and  drawn  by  thirty  full-blooded  zebras  jingling 
with  silver  bells  and  diamond  studded  harness — 
preceded  by  a  corps  of  air  purifiers  known  as 
Dust  Biters,  and  attended  by  her  tablet  carriers, 
time  passers  and  cramp  eradicators,  the  Queen,  in 
a  simple  traveling  dress  of  spun  glass  with  her 
locks  concealed  by  a  close-fitting  cap  of  elephant's 

1  Ichthyosaurus  Parvus. 

126 


hair,  feverishly  dictating  questions  in  preparation 
for  her  impending  interview. 

'It's  the  first  seven  hundred  questions  that  are  the 
hardest,'  one  of  the  scribes  is  reported  to  have  in- 
formed Sophonisba. 

The  remainder  of  the  train  was  made  up  of 
slaves,  cooks,  dream  interpreters  and  scribes, 
together  with  the  five  hundred  camels  bearing  the 
gifts  for  Solomon,  and  the  other  presents  in  kind."  l 

1  The  mere  catalogue  of  these  offerings,  as  listed  on  a  contemporary- 
Assyrian  inscription  recently  unearthed,  gives  one  a  more  intelligent 
conception  of  the  stupendous  character  of  this  royal  munificence 
than  any  labored  descriptive  paragraphs  could  afford. 

".  .  .  of  horses  from  Togarmah,"  so  the  inscription  reads, 
"fifty  milk-white  steeds  with  skins  of  satin  and  flowing  silky  manes, 
each  with  his  harness  of  finest  leather  studded  with  gold. 

And  from  the  Isles  that  lie  beyond  the  portals  of  the  Sea,  of 
ivory  one  hundred  manehs  of  finest  grain  without  any  blemish;  and 
of  ebony  yet  another  hundred,  in  diverse  shapes  fit  for  all  manner 
of  usage  and  polished  like  unto  a  burnished  mirror. 

And  of  lambs  from  Kedar  one  hundred,  pure  as  snow;  and  of 
goats  likewise  a  hundred,  for  a  milking  and  a  feasting;  and  of 
rams  from  that  land  yet  another  hundred  to  be  an  acceptable 
sacrifice. 

And  of  spice  from  Sheba,  fifty  camel  loads,  all  manner  of  spice 
therein  for  a  seasoning  and  a  sweetening;  and  of  gum  another  fifty 
camel  loads,  and  of  gold  yet  another  fifty  camel  loads. 

And  of  precious  stones  from  Sheba,  fifty  camel  loads,  to  every 
five  camels  among  them  a  different  stone,  and  the  names  thereof  were 
sardius,  topaz,  diamond,  beryl,  onyx,  jasper,  sapphire,  emerald, 
carbuncle  and  jade. 

This  is  the  list  of  the  gifts,  nor  has  any  been  added  thereto,  all 
very  fair  and  without  any  blemish,  and  cunningly  fashioned  for  a 

127 


The  Queen's  train  reached  the  coast  at  Hodeidah 
without  mishap,  it  having  been  her  intention  to 
embark  at  that  point  and  proceed  by  sea  to  Ezion- 
geber  there  to  rejoin  the  first  section,  and  it  was  at 
the  former  port,  according  to  Poteau,  that  one  of 
the  most  ludicrous,  and  at  the  same  time  annoying, 
incidents  of  the  voyage  took  place. 

For  it  seems  that  camp  having  been  pitched, 
while  the  camels  and  other  beasts  with  their  para- 
phernalia were  being  loaded  onto  barges  specially 
prepared  for  their  reception,  when  it  came  time  to 
put  the  Queen's  cats  aboard,  the  latter  were  no 
sooner  safely  ensconced  on  the  deck  than  the  rats 
began  to  abandon  the  vessel  in  great  haste,  swarms 
of  them  scurrying  ashore  through  every  loophole 
and  down  every  rope. 

Whereupon  the  sailors,  ever  a  superstitious  lot, 
mutinied,  declaring  that  the  departure  of  rodents 
from  a  ship  could  only  spell  disaster  in  the  near 
future,  and  refusing  to  take  passage  on  such  a  fore- 
pleasure  and  a  delight,  which  the  Queen  brought  to  the  King, 
Solomon,  for  an  offering.  .  .  .  ' 

As  someone  has  remarked  of  travel  in  that  day: 

"It  was  not  the  heat  but  the  cupidity  that  came  high!" 

128 


doomed  craft.  The  rebellion  spread  with  great 
celerity  throughout  the  entire  fleet,  the  crews 
scrambling  ashore  almost  as  rapidly  as  the  rats,  and 
bade  fair  to  disrupt  all  the  arrangements  for  the 
journey. 

Balkis,  when  apprised  of  this  state  of  affairs, 
flew  into  a  rage.1 

"Oh  rats!"  she  exclaimed,  and  caused  herself  to 
be  carried  down  to  the  beach  where  she  summoned 
the  dripping  sailory  to  her  presence. 

"Oh  Queen,  have  a  heart!"  they  implored  her. 
"This  ain't  no  time  to  sail  on  this  here,  now,  Red 
Sea,  no  Ma'am!" 

"And  why  not?"  she  enquired. 

"It's  because  of  them  rats,  Queen,"  they 
explained.  "They've  hooked  it  ashore,  that's  what, 
and  that  there  galloping  menagerie  ain't  worth  a 
chirp  in  a  gale  of  wind,  no  Ma'am." 

"And  what  do  you  propose  to  do  about  it?"  she 
demanded. 

"Saving  your  presence,  Ma'am,"  they  informed 
her,  "we  ain't  going  to  ship  on  no  floating  sar- 
cophagus, not  by  Sheba  we  ain't!  We're  honest 
seaf earing  sailormen,  we  are,  and  we  stand  for  our 
rights  first  and  last!" 

1  Annals  of  Sheba,  cylinder  9008. 
s>  129 


"Aye,  mates,  that  we  do,  by  the  great  blistering 
barnacle!  Yo  ho  and  a  bottle  of  gum.  .  ." 

"But  this  is  mutiny!"  she  warned  them. 

"Queen,"  they  replied,  "you  guessed  it  the  first 
time." 

Things  looked  very  black,  but  Balkis  was  not  one 
to  be  abashed  by  circumstances.  With  a  frown 
which,  according  to  an  eye-witness  of  the  scene, 
would  have  split  a  rock  in  two  she  sprang  from  her 
litter  and  drew  a  line  in  the  sand  with  her  big  toe. 

"Sheba  expects  every  man  to  do  his  duty,"  she 
informed  them.  "When  I've  finished  counting  up 
to  ten  those  of  you  who  haven't  stepped  across  this 
line  and  returned  to  your  ships  will  be  put  to  death 
on  the  spot.  Take  your  choice." 

"Verily,"  they  grumbled,  "we  are  between  the 
she-devil  and  the  deep  Red  Sea." 

"One,  two,  three,  four — "  Balkis  began  to  count. 

At  the  word  ten  every  man  had  stepped  across, 
and  the  great  Hodeidah  rat  mutiny,  or  Whisker 
Rebellion  as  it  was  always  called  henceforth  for 
some  reason,  was  at  an  end.1 

1  Many  of  the  sailors  managed  to  capture  rats  which  they  took 
aboard  with  them  in  cages,  thereby  assuaging  their  fears  to  some 
extent,  which  suggests  to  Steinkopf  the  origin  of  mascots ;  the  whole 
episode,  moreover,  furnishing  in  his  opinion  the  basis  for  the  cere- 
monies of  Crossing  the  Line  still  held  on  shipboard  to  this  day,  in 

130 


tanni 


6 

A  departure  was  finally  made,  amid  great 
demonstrations  of  enthusiasm  from  the  beach,  and 
the  fleet  proceeded  in  a  leisurely  manner  up  the 
coast,  tacking  this  way  and  that  before  the  varying 
winds,  and  resorting  to  the  banked  tiers  of  oars 
when  a  calm  caught  the  heavy-laden  barges 
drifting.  Poteau  states  that: 

"The  presence  aboard  of  so  much  live  stock 
unaccustomed  to  watery  locomotion,  and  con- 
sequently assailed  by  terrors  and  other  discomforts 
of  a  gastronomic  nature,  resulted  in  a  constant 
neighing  and  hee-hawing,  a  perpetual  bleating  and 
baaing  and  bellowing,  an  uninterrupted  whiffling 
and  burbling  of  camels,  which  could  be  heard  for 
miles  and  drew  men,  women  and  children  out  from 
the  coastwise  villages  on  both  shores  of  the  Red 
Sea,  marveling  at  this  unusual  din  upon  the  surface 
of  the  waters. 

Added  to  this  the  intermittent  mewing  and  purr- 
ing of  the  Queen's  cats,  the  noise  of  the  musicians 
making  merry  with  their  trumpets  and  drums,  the 
ceaseless  whirring  of  gambling  wheels,  and  the 

which,  as  he  points  out,  the  process  of  shaving  plays  an  important 
part  and  undoubtedly  has  some  connection  with  the  aforementioned 
reference  to  whiskers. 

131 


singing  of  the  sailors  at  their  chanties  all  combined 
to  produce  a  terrifying  cacophony  in  the  midst  of 
which  the  ship's  companies  sought  such  sleep  as 
they  might  achieve,  and  which  brought  the  fish 
gaping  from  the  depths,  as  one  chronicler  has  said. 

As  for  Balkis,  she  seems  to  have  spent  her  time 
sorting  out  her  question  tablets  and  scrambling 
about  in  the  rigging  to  her  heart's  content.  The 
sailors,  already  considerably  disturbed  by  the 
abnormal  features  of  this  voyage,  were  at  first  in 
great  trepidation  at  the  sight  of  the  Queen  walking 
carelessly  from  mast  to  mast  along  the  ropes  and 
winding  herself  around  the  spars,  but  they  gradu- 
ally became  accustomed  to  the  spectacle  and  derived 
much  innocent  amusement  from  it." 

So  the  days  and  nights  passed  and  Coomfidab 
and  Jeddah  were  astern,  and  then  Yemho, 
Aboonood  and  Moilah;  the  waters  narrowed  under 
the  shadow  of  Sinai  and  the  Gulf  of  Akabah  was 
entered,  until  finally  on  a  placid  morning  the  shin- 
ing minarets  of  Ezion-geber  came  spiring  over  the 
horizon  to  greet  the  approaching  armada. 


The  Queen's  barge  anchored  in  the  outer  harbor, 
while  the  accompanying  vessels  were  being  made 

132 


fast  at  the  piers  to  be  unloaded  of  their  freight,  and 
a  great  concourse  of  officials,  including  the  high 
dignitaries  of  Ezion  and  the  chiefs  of  her  own 
caravan  who  were  awaiting  her,  put  out  in  small 
boats  to  do  her  homage  and  offer  suitable  tokens  of 
loyalty  and  respect. 

The  Address  of  Welcome  itself  was  unfortu- 
nately never  delivered,  owing  to  an  accident  to  the 
craft  in  which  it  was  being  conveyed,  as  a  result 
of  which  the  majority  of  the  marble  slabs  on  which 
it  had  been  inscribed  were  lost  overboard  and  sank 
to  the  bottom  of  the  Bay,  together  with  the  Captain 
of  the  Port  of  Ezion  and  a  number  of  other  minor 
personages ;  but  the  Freedom  of  the  City  was  suc- 
cessfully presented  in  a  diamond  casket  and 
graciously  received  by  Balkis,  who  thereupon  enter- 
tained her  visitors  at  a  gorgeous  banquet  which  is 
reported  to  have  lasted  three  nights  and  two  days. 

At  last,  on  the  fifth  morning — the  officials  having 
by  then,  according  to  Poteau,  recovered  sufficiently 
to  be  taken  back  to  land  and  prepare  for  her  formal 
reception — the  royal  barge  was  towed  into  the  inner 
harbor  through  waters  strewn  with  roses  of  Sharon, 
and  Balkis  went  ashore,  amid  the  mingled  strains 
of  the  Sheban  national  anthem  and  the  vociferous 
outcries  of  a  frenzied  populace,  where  she  was 

133 


greeted  by  her  recent  guests  and  by  the  Envoy 
attached  to  her  person  by  Solomon  as  his  special 
representative.1 

The  Queen  stopped  to  inspect  the  guard  of  honor 
drawn  up  on  the  pier,  exchanged  a  few  kindly 
words  with  a  veteran  of  the  Philistine  War,  and 
then  drove  through  the  principal  streets  behind 
her  prancing  zebras  between  closely  packed  ranks 
of  cheering  humanity  to  the  Governor's  palace 
where  a  state  luncheon  was  served,  at  the  end  of 
which  she  is  supposed  to  have  made  her  famous 
observation,  to  the  effect  that : 

"We,  who  are  about  to  diet,  salute  you!"  2 

The  remainder  of  the  day  was  spent  in  a  review 

of  the  garrison,  during  the  course  of  which  Balkis 

conferred  the  Order  of  the  Ivory  Bath  on  a  number 

of  officers  and  was  elected  Honorary  Captain  of 


1  As  for  this  Envoy,  a  certain  Magog  who  appears  to  have  borne 
some  resemblance  to  Colossus,  Poteau  is  also  responsible  for  the 
statement  that: 

"This  personage  performed  his  duty  with  great  zeal — avec  beau- 
coup  de  conviction — and  having  been  attached  to  the  Queen's  person 
by  Solomon  as  his  representative,  he  also  quite  evidently  became 
very  much  attached  to  her  on  his  own  account,  a  fact  to  which  she 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  entirely  insensible." 

From  Gorton  one  learns  that  ".  .  .  it  was  common  talk  around 
Ezion  that  the  Envoy  was  all  'magog'  over  Balkis!" 

3  Annals  of  Slieba,  cylinder  9618. 

134 


the  Ezion  Legion,  and  in  the  late  afternoon  her 
convoy  set  out  through  the  North  Gate  for 
Jerusalem,  increased  by  Magog's  voluminous  suite 
and  by  her  own  sumptuary  caravan. 

8 

From  Ezion  the  great  host  traveled  slowly 
northward  through  Edom,  arranged  in  a  hollow 
square  of  which  the  Queen's  litter,  attended  now 
by  Magog,  was  the  center,  and  disposed  in  ranks 
of  two  hundred  camels  abreast  the  better  to  guard 
against  stragglers.  On  through  the  Desert  of  Zin, 
past  Mount  Hor  to  Kadesh,  and  ever  onward  to 
Zephath  at  the  southern  extremity  of  the  Dead 
Sea,  or  the  Great  Salt  Lake  as  it  was  better  known. 
Thence,  bearing  westward,  to  Arad,  and  then 
northward  again  along  the  black  stone  paved  road 
until  Hebron  was  reached,  where  Balkis  rested  for 
two  weeks  while  she  sent  couriers  to  Solomon  with 
the  news  of  her  near  approach. 

Poteau  says  that  ".  .  .  the  enthusiasm  over  her 
coming  passed  all  bounds.  All  along  the  line  of 
march  the  towns  and  villages  were  hung  with  gar- 
lands and  decorated  with  triumphal  arches;  and 
the  route  which  she  followed  was  lined  with  spec- 
tators come  from  every  corner  of  Israel,  many  of 

135 


whom  had  been  encamped  on  the  spot  for  weeks, 
sometimes  for  months,  awaiting  her  arrival. 

Her  appearance  was  greeted  everywhere  with 
frantic  acclamations,  and  the  magnificence  of  her 
enormous  retinue  aroused  the  bewildered,  although 
always  shrewdly  appraising,  admiration  of  the 
simple  country  folk. 

lOy,  oy!'  they  cried  continuously.  Trom  gold 
she  got  it  everything!  What  did  she  done  she 
should  get  it  so  much  mezumeh?  See  now,  zebras 
yet!' 

It  is  estimated  that  Balkis  received  two  hundred 
and  forty  deputations,  accepted  the  freedom  of 
more  than  three  hundred  communities,  tasted  some 
six  hundred  and  fifty  bowls  of  goat's  milk,  patted 
three  thousand  four  hundred  and  seventy-six  little 
girls  on  the  head,  and  had  her  hand  kissed  twelve 
thousand  times,  so  much  so,  in  fact,  that  her 
knuckles  became  calloused  from  such  indiscrimi- 
nate osculation." 

At  the  end  of  two  weeks  Balkis  set  forth  with 
a  chosen  escort  on  the  last  stages  to  Jerusalem, 
leaving  the  bulk  of  her  establishment  to  follow  a 
day  later,  and  taking  with  her  only  her  immediate 
attendants,  the  nobles  and  Heralds,  one  each  of 
every  kind  of  present  for  Solomon,  her  wardrobe, 

136 


and  of  course  her  cats.  On  to  Solomon's  Pools, 
past  Bethlehem  to  Rachel's  Grave  on  which  she 
deposited  a  memorial  tablet,  and  so  finally  at  sun- 
set into  the  Plain  of  Ephraim  where  she  pitched 
camp. 

At  the  further  side  of  the  Valley  of  Hinnom 
spread  before  her,  high  above  its  four  hills  all  aglow 
in  the  crimson  light  from  the  west,  Balkis  gazed 
long  and  rapturously  upon  Jerusalem,  the  Royal 
City  of  David.  And  on  the  summit  of  Ophel,  in  the 
porch  of  the  House  of  Lebanon,  summoning  his 
wisdom  against  the  unknown  morrow,  Solomon  sat 
far  into  the  night  watching  the  twinkling  lights  of 
her  hundred  camp  fires  .  .  . 


137 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE     YOUNG     VISITOR 


The  dawn  came  with  a  throbbing  of  drums, 
ushering  brilliant  sunlight  into  a  sky  trembling 
with  brazen  music,  and  with  the  fr  erne  scent  chirm 
of  gathering  hosts. 

At  an  early  hour,  down  from  Ophel  through  the 
Zion  quarter,  the  entire  Pelethite  Corps  in  full 
marching  paint — green  striped  with  yellow — under 
the  command  of  the  veteran  Abishai,  passed  on 
their  way  to  the  Ephraim  Gate  to  line  the 
approaches  of  the  city  and  maintain  order  among 
the  hurrying  thousands  jostling  one  another  for 
coigns  of  vantage  along  the  route  of  the  royal 
entry.  All  traffic  south,  and  west  on  the  Joppa 
Causeway,  was  stopped,  and  incoming  caravans 
diverted  north  to  the  Acra  and  Bezetha  gates. 

Considerable  difficulty  was  experienced  at  first, 
so  Poteau  relates,  in  clearing  the  Bethlehem  road, 
but  after  several  hundred  spectators  had  been 
crushed  to  death  and  otherwise  incapacitated  by  the 
chariots  provided  for  such  emergency,  some  sem- 
blance of  discipline  was  finally  achieved;  and  the 
good-natured  throngs  submitted  to  the  patrols,  who 
adopted  the  simple  plan  of  cutting  off  the  feet  of 

138 


TIIEWIIJJN©  WfiFGIK 


those  whose  enthusiasm  caused  them  to  push 
forward  in  too  great  proximity  to  the  established 
lines,  the  order  of  the  day  reading : 

"If  anyone's  foot  offend  you,  cut  it  off."  l 

His  arrangements  once  completed,  Abishai  him- 
self proceeded  to  the  Queen's  camp  with  a  guard 
of  honor  consisting  of  a  Composite  Regiment 
picked  from  every  division  in  the  corps,  each  man 
of  which  possessed  the  Armageddon  Medal  as  well 
as  a  galaxy  of  other  stars  and  decorations  which 
almost  entirely  concealed  his  breastplate — as  im- 
posing a  body  of  men,  Poteau  asserts,  as  ever  went 
over  the  top  of  a  wall. 

In  the  meantime  the  crowds  assembled  before  the 
Gate  were  amusing  themselves  with  thumbnail 
sketches  of  Balkis  done  on  brick  by  the  hawkers, 
and  pointing  out,  quite  inaccurately  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  the  celebrities  as  they  arrived 
one  by  one  in  gorgeous  litters  to  take  up  their 
stations. 

"Oy  oyl"  they  cried  constantly.  "See  now,  such 
a  one  yet!" 

2 

Meanwhile  in  the  Queen's  camp  a  corresponding 
activity  of  preparation  obtained,  and  it  was  quite 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  38,  v.  7. 

139 


evident  to  all  concerned  that  Balkis  would  be 
shamelessly  late.  In  the  first  place,  having  spent 
two  thirds  of  the  night  in  the  contemplation  of 
Jerusalem,  when  the  time  came  to  awaken  her 
Balkis  could  not  be  aroused  from  her  sleep. 
Sophonisba  finally  solved  the  problem  by  tickling 
the  soles  of  her  feet  with  an  ostrich  feather,  a  liberty 
which  none  but  the  privileged  nurse  would  have 
presumed  to  take,  but  much  precious  time  had 
already  been  lost. 

In  addition  to  this  a  whole  series  of  accidents 
occurred  which  threw  the  entire  establishment  into 
a  state  of  dithering  confusion.  For  the  first  time 
in  their  careers  the  she-asses  refused  to  give  a  suf- 
ficient quantity  of  milk  for  the  Queen's  bath;  six 
of  the  nobles  discovered  that  their  personal  bag- 
gage had  been  left  behind  at  Ezion  and  committed 
suicide;  and,  as  though  this  had  not  been  enough, 
fifty  of  the  Queen's  cats  broke  loose  from  their 
cage  and  hurled  themselves  into  the  nearest  gold- 
fish tank,  where  they  were  promptly  bitten  to 
death  by  these  bloodthirsty  carnivora. 

The  bulk  of  these  mishaps  were  concealed  from 
the  Queen,  but,  what  with  one  thing  and  another, 
she  was  only  trying  on  her  four  hundred  and  sixty- 
first  dress  in  an  endeavor  to  decide  on  a  suitable 

140 


garment  for  the  ocasion  when  Abishai  arrived 
with  the  escort. 

"Oh  dear!"  she  exclaimed.    "I'm  a  perfect  sight!" 

It  was  Sophonisba  who  pointed  out  to  her  that 
as  long  as  she  remained  in  her  actual  condition  she 
was  entirely  too  much  of  a  sight,  no  matter  how 
perfect,  to  do  anything  whatsoever  of  a  public 
nature,  and  between  them  an  acceptable  costume 
was  finally  selected,  while  the  soldiery  were  being 
entertained  by  a  distribution  of  edible  gum 
stamped  with  the  Queen's  monogram. 

"...  a  clinging  one-piece  suit  of  green  scales," 
so  Poteau  describes  the  costume  in  question,  "taken 
from  the  head  of  the  Arabian  puffing  lizard,1  in 
the  manufacture  of  which  three  million  four  thou- 
sand nine  hundred  and  fifty-eight  of  these  animals 
were  slaughtered,  possessing  as  they  did  only  two 
such  scales,  one  behind  each  ear.  Over  this,  draped 
from  her  shoulders  in  graceful  folds,  she  carried  a 
cloak  of  emeralds  mounted  on  strings  of  pearls. 
Her  feet,  embellished  with  anklets  and  rings,  rested 
on  ivory  sandals,  and  her  fingers  were  encased  in 
hinged  sheaths  of  jade  encrusted  with  gems  and 
fastened  to  her  bracelets  with  ropes  of  diamonds. 

Upon  her  brow  she  wore  a  gold  head-dress  in  the 

1  Vermiculus  furiosus. 

141 


shape  of  a  crescent,  embossed  with  precious  stones 
and  surmounted  by  a  crest  of  peacock's  feathers 
spread  out  f anwise,  from  the  horns  of  which  twenty 
chains  of  jewels,  ten  on  each  side,  fell  in  loops  of 
varying  lengths  to  rejoin  her  necklace  of  sardius 
and  ruby  supporting  the  great  blazing  pendant  of 
the  Order  of  the  Ivory  Bath.  Under  the  flaming 
splendor  of  her  salamander  hair  the  long  emerald 
earrings  that  reached  to  her  pale  shoulders  gleamed 
like  sunlit  leaves  in  a  forest  glade." 


The  presentation  of  Abishai  having  finally  taken 
place,  the  guard  of  honor  stuck  their  gum  inside 
their  helmets  and  Balkis  gave  the  signal  for 
departure. 

"Well,  where  do  we  go  from  here?"  she  enquired. 

Preceded  by  the  guard,  in  the  midst  of  which 
the  Heralds  on  their  dromedaries  attracted  uni- 
versal attention,  she  went  forth  from  her  camp  in 
an  open  litter  of  solid  gold  borne  by  two  hundred 
slaves,  seated  on  an  ivory  throne  inlaid  with 
emeralds.  Abishai  and  Magog  rode  beside  her, 
glaring  jealously  at  each  other  across  the  litter,  so 
Gorton  asserts,  while  behind  her  came  her  retinue  of 
nobles,  the  Lords  Hamdani,  Istakhri,  Idrisi  and 

142 


others;  the  six  missing  ones  having  escaped  the 
Queen's  notice  in  the  general  excitement. 

Down  the  Bethlehem  road  they  went,  amid  mani- 
festations of  popular  delight  which  threatened  at 
times  to  interrupt  her  progress  so  eagerly  did  the 
people  press  forward,  and  which  required  the  most 
ruthless  swordplay  on  the  part  of  the  troops  to 
quell;  and  so  finally  to  the  open  space  before  the 
Ephraim  Gate,  now  filled  with  a  great  concourse 
of  higher  officials,  where  the  demonstrations  of 
welcome  from  the  populace  bordered  on  the 
delirious 

".  .  .  hats,  shoes,  lunch  baskets  and  even  babies 
being  hurled  into  the  air,"  according  to  Poteau. 

Here  a  halt  was  made,  while  the  Princes  and 
dignitaries  were  presented  to  the  Queen  and  per- 
mitted to  kiss  her  hand.1  Among  these  personages 
may  be  cited  Hoshea,  Prince  of  Ephraim,  repre- 
senting the  Princes  of  the  Tribes;  Ahishar,  the 
master  of  the  royal  household;  Ahithophel  and 
Jehoiada,  the  royal  councilors;  and  Benaiah,  the 
commander  of  the  Aggressive  Expeditionary 

1  Gorton  insists  that  several  of  them  were  so  charmed  by  her 
person  that  no  sooner  had  they  passed  before  her  than  they  made 
their  way  to  the  end  of  the  line  again,  and  that  in  this  manner  not 
a  few  of  them  were  presented  to  her  three  and  even  four  times,  but 
there  is  no  record  of  this  in  any  contemporary  chronicle. 

143 


Forces,  known  as  Black  Benaiah  the  Lion  Killer. 
To  each  of  them  Balkis  said: 

"So  pleased  to  meet  you,  lovely  day,  isn't  it?" 
and  for  those  who  filed  past  on  her  left  she  added, 
"excuse  it  please,  the  hand  nearest  the  heart  you 
know!" 

They  for  their  part  merely  replied: 

"Greetings,  Queen,  welcome  to  our  city,"  and 
were  hurried  on  by  those  behind. 

At  the  last,  in  answer  to  frenzied  appeals  from 
the  multitude,  Balkis  arose  from  her  seat  and 
kissed  her  hands  in  all  directions,  finally  addressing 
a  few  words  to  the  cheering  thousands. 

"Hello  everybody!"  she  cried.  "All  I  can  say  at 
this  moment  is  Israel  go  bragh!"  1 

Whereupon,  with  a  loud  crashing  of  cymbals — 
the  great  four-man  met  silt  aim  and  tseltselim — and 
a  joyous  clarioning  from  the  long  straight  metal 
hatsotserah,  the  cavalcade  was  put  in  motion  once 
more,  and  Balkis  passed  in  solemn  majesty  through 
the  ponderous  portals  of  the  Ephraim  Gate, 
guarded  by  the  massive  Tower  of  Furnaces,  into 
the  City  of  David  to  where,  on  the  high  summit  of 
Ophel,  one  awaited  her  coming  with  anxious  heart 
beats,  for  all  the  immensity  of  his  wisdom  .  .  . 

1Sheban  for  Long  live  Israel. 

144 


2  „ 

-  -S 

X       ' 

"  a 

z    >> 
0    2 

5    I 

li 

^      f  ^ 


One  must  turn  to  Poteau  for  a  detailed  account 
of  her  triumphal  passage  through  the  city;  space 
will  not  permit,  mere  duplication  of  his  glowing 
paragraphs  will  not  justify,  a  repetition  of  that 
famous  description — the  garlanded,  flower  strewn 
streets;  the  festoons  of  humanity  literally  clinging 
to  the  cornices  of  the  flag  draped  buildings  like 
clustered  bees  at  a  swarming;  the  continuously 
swelling  storm  of  applause  which  rolled  like  a 
rising  tide  before  her;  the  magnificent  bearing  of 
the  Cherethite  Corps  who  lined  the  approach  to  the 
palace  under  the  command  of  Eleazar,  the  victor 
of  the  Battle  of  the  Barley  Field;  the  dazzling 
splendor  of  her  cortege  as  it  wound  slowly  up  the 
hill;  the  entrancing  loveliness  of  the  slender  little 
figure  in  the  shimmering  litter,  bowing  and  smiling, 
and  clapping  her  little  hands  together  in  an  ecstasy 
of  tremulous  enchantment. 

"Oulcda!"  she  kept  exclaiming  to  herself  over 
and  over  again  in  Sheban.  "Oulala,  oulala.  .  .  ."  * 

It  is  during  this  ride  that  Benaiah  is  supposed  to 
have  remarked  that 

"Verily,  Delilah  has  nothing  on  Balkis." 

1  Approximately,  What  do  you  know  about  that? 

145 


10 


To  which  the  witty  Ahishar  is  reported  to  have 
replied : 

"Verily,  Balkis  has  practically  nothing  on 
herself!"1 


Solomon,  meanwhile,  was  awaiting  the  Queen- 
attired  from  head  to  foot  in  crimson  fabrics  edged 
with  gold,  his  body  fresh  from  the  hands  of  his 
barbers,  painters,  valets  and  perfumers — seated  in 
the  porch  of  the  House  of  Lebanon,  that  imposing 
edifice  one  hundred  cubits  in  length  by  fifty  wide, 
paneled,  beamed  and  roofed  with  cedar,  from 
which  he  commanded  a  view  of  the  open  courtyard 
in  which  Balkis  must  shortly  alight. 

He  was  surrounded  by  the  Envoys,  the  Captains 
and  Princes  of  Israel  and  their  retinues,  and  his 
own  body  servants  and  pages,  while  at  his  elbow 
stood  a  privileged  group  including  Adoniram,  the 
appraiser  of  tribute,  his  tutor  Jehiel,  and  the 
mighty  Shammah,  who  had  fought  against  the 
Philistines  under  David.  At  one  side  a  sharim  of 
five  hundred  singers,  led  by  Jeduthun  in  person, 
alternated  with  the  nogeirim  of  three  hundred 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  40,  v.  9. 

146 


players,  conducted  by  Asaph,  in  a  continuous 
antiphony  of  mellisonant  diapasons. 

"On  the  opposite  side,"  so  Poteau  relates,  "in 
marked  contrast  to  this  harmony,  a  specially  con- 
structed stand  sheltered  the  King's  seven  hundred 
wives,  whose  gaudy  coloration  and  vivaciously 
argumentative  chatter  gave  to  this  structure  the 
appearance  of  an  aviary." 

Whatever  views  they  may  hold  on  other  subjects, 
Necessitarians  and  Heroics  alike  are  united  in 
admitting  that  Solomon  was  in  a  state  of  uncon- 
trollable fidgets  during  these  last  few  minutes  prior 
to  his  meeting  with  Balkis. 

Gorton  is  of  the  opinion,  for  instance,  that  the 
King  chose  crimson  garments  that  morning,  requir- 
ing a  similar  pigmentation  of  his  features,  in  order 
to  conceal  his  embarrassed  blushes  ".  .  .  arising 
either  from  a  diffidence  which  he  experienced  at  the 
necessity  of  receiving  her  with  appropriate  enthusi- 
asm in  the  presence  of  his  wives,  or  from  a  reluc- 
tance to  have  the  latter  taken  by  Balkis  as  a 
criterion  of  his  good  taste."  * 

1  Transom  suggests  a  possibly  more  reasonable  cause,  to  wit,  an 
apprehension  on  Solomon's  part  that  the  Queen  would  turn  out  to 
be  "a  quite  impossible  person,"  as  he  expresses  it,  who  by  her 
behavior  and  lack  of  breeding  would  shock  the  susceptibilities  of 
his  somewhat  straightlaced  capital.  He  was  not  unaware,  of  course, 

147 


And  then,  as  Poteau  himself  points  out,  rumors 
had  undoubtedly  reached  him  of  the  camel  loads  of 
question  tablets  on  which  Balkis  had  been  working 
while  he  slept! 

At  all  events  for  one  reason  or  another  it  is 
certain  that  Solomon  was  extremely  nervous  and 
spent  his  time,  so  one  learns  from  Hornblower, 
".  .  .  fussily  finding  fault  with  his  appearance, 
and  feverishly  running  through  his  Books  of 
Deportment  and  the  pages  of  his  favorite  proverbs 
and  epigrams." 

And  then  with  an  accompanying  roar  of  cheers 
and  blaring  of  bands  the  head  of  the  column  filed 
into  the  courtyard;  the  Cherethites  formed  in 
massed  ranks  on  either  side  of  the  stairs;  Benaiah, 
and  Hoshea,  and  Ahishar  and  the  rest  came  hasten- 
ing up  the  steps  to  the  King's  foot-stool.  Balkis 
had  arrived. 

"What  is  she  like?"    Solomon  found  time  to  ask. 

"Every  inch  a  Queen,  dressed  in  chromatic 
scales,"  Ahishar  told  him,  but  there  was  no  oppor- 
tunity for  further  questioning. 

of  her  semi-insane,  semi-acrobatic,  parentage,  and  he  had  heard  of  her 
youthful  escapades  and  contortionistic  propensities,  and  it  may  well 
be  that  Solomon  ".  .  .  was  all  of  a  twitter,"  to  quote  Transom 
again,  "lest  Balkis  should  come  tumbling  up  the  stairs  to  greet  him, 
or  take  to  running  around  the  ledges  of  his  palace." 

148 


The  Queen's  litter  had  reached  the  foot  of  the 
stairs,  and  she  was  at  that  moment  alighting  from 
it,  leaning  on  the  arms  of  Magog  and  Abishai.  A 
swift  flutter  of  the  hands  to  her  jeweled  headdress, 
an  appraising  glance  around  her  at  all  this  mag- 
nificence summoned  to  do  her  honor,  and  Balkis 
turned  to  the  ascent  before  her,  searching  for  her 
host. 

Solomon  arose  and  went  down  the  steps  to  meet 
her. 

For  a  few  breathless  seconds  they  stood  face  to 
face  in  silence,  each  no  doubt  revising  previously 
conceived  estimates  of  the  other,  and  then  Abishai 
came  forward. 

"Queen,"  he  announced,  in  his  abrupt  soldierly 
manner,  "shake  hands  with  King  Solomon!" 

"So  good  of  you  to  come,"  Solomon  murmured, 
as  he  stooped  to  kiss  her  finger  tips.  "Hope  de- 
ferred maketh  the  heart  sick,  but  when  the  desire 
cometh  it  is  a  tree  of  life!" 

"Oh,  how  sweet!"  Balkis  exclaimed.  "You 
must  let  me  copy  it  down  some  time." 

"Just  a  little  thing  of  my  own,"  Solomon  in- 
formed her  deprecatingly. 

"But  I  think  it's  lovely,"  Balkis  insisted.  "And 
your  city  is  simply  grand !  Of  course  I  love  Marib, 

149 


but  if  I  couldn't  live  there   I'd  like  to  live  in 
Jerusalem,  if  you  know  what  I  mean?" 

"Queen,"  Solomon  assured  her,  "you  don't  know 
the  half  of  it!"  and  with  graceful  courtesy  he  led 
up  to  the  porch.1 

6 

At  the  top  of  the  stairs  Balkis  paused  for  a 
moment  and  narrowly  inspected  the  grand-stand 
containing  the  King's  Ladies. 

"Those  are  your  wives,  I  suppose,"  she  remarked 
to  Solomon,  who  would  have  hurried  her  on.  "Do 
you  mind  if  I  look  at  them — hum,  some  of  them 
must  have  been  really  quite  pretty  at  one  time." 

It  is  at  this  point  in  his  narrative  that  Poteau 
indulges  in  a  statement  which,  were  it  not  for  his 
habitual  veracity  of  relation,  one  would  be  tempted 
to  disbelieve. 

"In  spite  of  the  music,"  he  says,  "the  remark 
made  by  the  Queen  was  overheard  by  Ichneumon 
of  Egypt  who  promptly  repeated  it  to  Pilaff 
of  Tripoli,  and  in  a  very  few  seconds  it  had  been 
translated  into  two  hundred  and  thirty-three 
languages  and  gone  the  rounds  of  the  crowded 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  40,  v.  22. 

150 


benches.  Whereupon,  as  one  woman,  all  seven 
hundred  of  the  King's  wives  turned  to  Balkis  and 
stuck  out  their  tongues  at  her." 

But  the  episode  went  unobserved  by  the  Queen 
who  had  already  passed  on  Solomon's  arm  into  the 
interior  of  the  House  of  Lebanon,  and  was  admir- 
ing the  lofty  apartment  with  its  triple  tier  of  square 
windows  and  its  four  rows  of  cedar  pillars,  and 
running  eagerly  from  pillar  to  post  examining  the 
five  hundred  shields  of  beaten  gold  suspended  upon 
its  walls. 

"I'm  awfully  fond  of  gold,  aren't  you?"  she 
asked  Solomon.  "It  brightens  up  the  corners  of 
a  room  so,  don't  you  think?" 

"There  is  gold  and  a  quantity  of  rubies,"  he 
replied,  "but  the  lips  of  knowledge  are  a  precious 
jewel.  How  much  better  is  it  to  get  wisdom  than 
gold,  and  to  get  understanding  rather  to  be  chosen 
than  silver!" 

"Yes,  of  course,  that's  true,  too  true,"  Balkis 
agreed.  "And  so  well  put." 

"Just  a  little  thing  of  my  own,"  Solomon 
murmured.1 

Introductions  having  been  effected,  Balkis  sum- 
moned her  slaves  and  laid  her  gifts  before  the  King 

1  Hebron  Papyrus,  ch.  40,  v.  39. 

151 


which  were  received  with  loud  exclamations  of 
wonderment  on  the  part  of  the  throng  and  com- 
mitted into  the  hands  of  the  proper  officials  for  safe 
keeping.1 

"Some  of  the  things  are  really  rather  sweet," 
Balkis  kept  telling  them,  "but  of  course  it's  the 
spirit  behind  the  gift  that  counts,  isn't  it?" 

Whereupon  the  irrepressible  Ahishar  remarked 
behind  his  hand  to  Benaiah  that: 

"Every  little  bit  added  to  what  you've  got  makes 
just  a  little  bit  more!  Just  a  little  thing  of  my 
own.  .  ."2 

A  tour  of  inspection  was  then  made  through  the 
Porch  of  Pillars  and  the  Porch  of  the  Throne, 
around  the  columned  courtyards,  and  into  the  royal 
palace — a  massive  building  of  costly  hewed  stones 
sawed  with  saws  within  and  without  from  cellars  to 
copings,  some  of  them  ten  cubits  square,  and 
beamed  with  cedar — where  a  state  luncheon  was 
served  on  the  gold  plate.3 

*The  gold  and  jewelry  to  Azmaveth,  guardian  of  the  major  and 
minor  profits,  the  gum  and  spices  to  Joash,  custodian  of  the  cellars 
of  oil,  the  varied  equipment  to  Jchonathan,  janitor  of  the  royal 
storehouses  and  castles,  and  the  animals  to  Shitrai  and  Obil,  wardens 
of  the  herds  and  camels. 

3  Memoirs  of  Benaiah,  fragment  42 

8  Poteau  states  that  **.  .  .  throughout  these  ceremonies  Balkis 
was  simply  an  animated  exclamation  point,  this  symbol  replacing  for 

152 


This  luncheon,  followed  by  the  gala  banquet  that 
evening,  ushered  in,  a  round  of  functions  which 
lasted  for  three  weeks  and  piled  peelings  on  ossi- 
fied remnants,  according  to  Ahishar;  and  which 
drove  the  unfortunate  provender  official  for  the 
month  to  his  grave — the  worthy  Ahimaaz,  from 
Napthali,  who  was  married  to  Solomon's  daughter, 
Basmath.1 

Then  for  another  three  weeks  Balkis  entertained 
the  court  in  her  own  camp  at  a  series  of  acrobatic 
displays  and  lavish  feasts  which  included  a  private 
luncheon  for  the  King's  wives,  no  record  of  which 
unfortunately  is  available,  although  Poteau  asserts 
that: 

"It  is  rumored  that  at  the  close  of  the  entertain- 
ment a  large  ornament  in  the  shape  of  a  bell  was 
presented  to  Balkis  by  Ichneumon  and  hung 

the  time  being  the  question  mark  which  ordinarily  expressed  her 
mental  attitude  towards  her  surroundings. 

Indeed,  under  the  stress  of  all  these  wonders,  she  ventured  to  make 
a  quite  passable  epigram  of  her  own,  to  the  effect  that: 

'Solomon  dwelt  in  marvel  halls!' 

Everything,  it  seemed,  was  WONDERFUL,  the  buildings  were 
simply  GRAND,  the  food  was  so  GOOD,  the  six  hundred  pages  were 
just  SWEET,  Shammah  and  Benaiah  were  DARLINGS,  Solomon 

himself  was  too  LOVELY  FOR  WORDS  AND  SO  CLEVER 

!!!!!!" 

1  Gorton  insists  that  her  name  was  in  reality  Bismuth,  but  this  view 
is  not  supported  by  the  majority  of  genealogists. 

153 


around  her  neck  amid  gales  of  laughter  from  the 
spectators,  the  inner  significance  of  which  the 
Queen  does  not  ever  seem  to  have  grasped.  .  ."  l 


One  may  not  leave  the  account  of  those  first 
weeks  in  Jerusalem  without  some  slight  reference 
to  the  Queen's  own  private  impressions  of  Solomon, 
recorded  in  her  intimate  diaries.2  Pilaster  had  been 
worthy  of  underlining  and  Colossus  had  earned  his 
scattered  capitals,  but  in  the  case  of  her  host  Balkis 
found  it  necessary  to  make  use  exclusively  of  the 
latter  calligraphy  in  order  to  express  the  immensity 
of  her  fascinated  admiration. 

"SOLOMON  IS  A  BEAR,"  she  writes  in  one 
place.  "OF  COURSE  HE  IS  TERRIBLY 
FUNNY  TO  LOOK  AT  AND  VERY  FUSSY 
ABOUT  HIS  CLOTHES,  BUT  I  ALWAYS 
THINK  IT  IS  SUCH  A  MISTAKE  TO 
JUDGE  PEOPLE  BY  APPEARANCES, 
AND  WHEN  YOU  REALLY  GET  TO 
KNOW  HIM,  YOU  SIMPLY  CAN'T  HELP 
LOVING  HIM.  HE  IS  SO  POLITE,  AND 
SO  UNCONCEITED  ABOUT  ALL  HIS 

1This  is  indignantly  denied  by  the  Heroic  School. 
3  Solomon,  vol.  52,  left  handed. 

154 


WONDERFUL  THINGS,  AND  SO  SWEET 
TO  HIS  HORRID  WIVES." 

Concerning  the  latter  Balkis  observes : 
"Solomon's  wives  are  a  pretty  sad  bunch  on  the 
whole.  Of  course  with  so  many  of  them  you  can't 
expect  them  all  to  be  whirlwinds,  but  I  was  sur- 
prised to  find  how  FEW  of  them  can  hold  a  candle 
to  me,  but  then  I  suppose  I'm  exceptional  that  way. 
Ichneumon  is  the  best-looking  one,  and  I  daresay 
she  was  really  quite  beautiful  in  her  day,  in  that 
washed-out  Egyptian  style  which  some  people  ad- 
mire although  I  can't  stand  it  myself.  Pilaff  is  per- 
fectly AWFUL,  so  fat  and  greasy.  Psha  is  a 
disagreeable  little  cat,  and  so  stuck  up  although 
she's  only  a  Persian  and  her  family  were  really 
nothing  at  all.  Panorama  is  rather  sweet,  but 
hasn't  any  brains  to  speak  of  and  giggles  all  the 
time.  I  should  think  Solomon  would  go  crazy  when 
he's  with  her.  I  understand  he  is  very  MUCH  in- 
terested just  now  in  a  Shulamite  girl,  but  of  course 
that's  supposed  to  be  a  SECRET." 

Of  his  wisdom  she  remarks  elsewhere  that: 
"SOLOMON     IS     REALLY     TREMEN- 
DOUSLY   CLEVER.      HE    IS    ALWAYS 
SAYING  THE   CUTEST   THINGS,  AND 
HE  CAN  TALK  ON  ANY  SUBJECT  AND 

155 


MAKE  IT  INTERESTING.  HE  WAS 
TELLING  ME  THE  OTHER  DAY  ABOUT 
WHAT  REALLY  HAPPENED  TO  SAM- 
SON WHEN  THAT  DELILAH  WOMAN 
GYPPED  HIM,  AND  IT  WAS  SO  FASCI- 
NATING AND  SOME  OF  IT  TERRIBLY 
FUNNY.  I  WISH  I  COULD  REMEM- 
BER WHAT  IT  WAS  THAT  SAMSON 
SAID  WHEN  HE  PULLED  DOWN  THE 
TEMPLE  OF  DAGON  -  SOMETHING 
ABOUT  COLUMNS  RIGHT  AND  COL- 
UMNS LEFT  AND  BEING  THE  FIRST 
COLUMNIST  IN  HISTORY  -  BUT  I 
NEVER  CAN  REMEMBER  STORIES  UN- 
LESS I  WRITE  THEM  DOWN  RIGHT 
AWAY. 

AND  THEN  HE  IS  ALWAYS  SO  MOD- 
EST ABOUT  ALL  THE  WONDERFUL 
THINGS  HE  SAYS,  AND  TRIES  TO  PASS 
THEM  OFF  AS  THOUGH  THEY  WERE 
REALLY  QUITE  INSIGNIFICANT,  AND 
I  DON'T  THINK  HIS  COURT  REALLY 
APPRECIATE  THEM  AT  ALL.  BUT  I 
RESPOND  SO  QUICKLY  TO  THINGS  OF 
THAT  SORT  THAT  I  CAN  ALWAYS  SEE 
THE  BEAUTY  IN  EVERYTHING  THAT 

156 


HE  SAYS  EVEN  THOUGH  I  DON'T  AL- 
WAYS UNDERSTAND  IT  RIGHT  AWAY, 
BECAUSE  OF  COURSE  SOME  OF  HIS 
SAYINGS  ARE  ENTIRELY  TOO  DARK 
FOR  POOR  ME,  BUT  HE  IS  AWFULLY 
PATIENT  ABOUT  REPEATING  THEM." 
In  another  paragraph  she  states  that : 
"I  LOVE  HIM  VERY,  VERY  MUCH,  IN 
A  WONDERFUL  SPIRITUAL  WAY,  AND 
I  FEEL  THAT  OUR  MINDS  WERE  SPE- 
CIALLY MADE  FOR  EACH  OTHER.  I 
DON'T  KNOW  HOW  TO  EXPRESS  IT 
EXACTLY,  BUT  I  THINK  HIS  SPIRIT 
CALLED  TO  MINE  ACROSS  THE 
DESERT  AND  THAT  IS  REALLY  WHY 
I  CAME  TO  HIM.  I  KNOW  OF  CASES 
WHERE  TWINS  HAVE  DONE  THAT, 
AND  PERHAPS  MENTALLY  WE  ARE 
TWINS  TOO.  I  TOLD  THAT  TO  AHIS- 
HAR  YESTERAY  AND  HE  LAUGHED 
AND  SAID  'YES,  GOLD  DUST  TWINS.' 
HE  IS  SO  WITTY. 

I  DON'T  THINK  SOLOMON  IS  VERY 
HAPPY,  AND  SOMETIMES  WHEN  I 
TALK  TO  HIM  HE  LOOKS  AS  THOUGH 
HE  WERE  REALLY  IN  GREAT  PAIN, 

157 


AND  I  HOPE  THAT  BEFORE  I  GO  I  CAN 
DO  SOMETHING  TO  HELP  HIM,  BE- 
CAUSE I  KNOW  THAT  I  HAVE  AN  UN- 
DERSTANDING HEART  IF  HE  WILL 
ONLY  CONFIDE  IN  ME. 

Perhaps  it  has  something  to  do  with  that  S hula- 
mite  girl.  I  must  get  Benaiah  to  tell  me  more  about 
it,  as  he  seems  to  be  awfully  up  on  everything  that's 
going  on  and  is  quite  a  DARLING,  although  he 
is  frightfully  rude  to  Abishai  and  Magog  and 
Hoshea  and  the  others  when  they  come  around. 
I'm  very  much  afraid  they're  all  falling  in  love  with 
me,  poor  dears,  but  what  can  I  do? 

I  sometimes  wish  that  I  were  not  so  terribly 
ATTRACTIVE  to  married  men.  ." 


8 


So  the  weeks  passed  in  reciprocal  festivities  and 
the  time  came  for  the  Queen's  official  interview  with 
Solomon.  Poteau  has  interesting  accounts  of  the 
elaborate  preparations  made  by  both  parties  for  this 
function — the  setting  forth  of  Solomon's  Library 
of  Knowledge,  in  which  every  conceivable  question, 
from  Who  mends  the  crack  of  dawn  to  What  keeps 
night  from  breaking  when  it  falls,  was  answered; 

158 


the  gathering  together  in  classified  piles  of  the 
Queen's  question  tablets ;  and  the  furnishing  of  the 
apartment  in  which  the  debate  was  to  occur,  includ- 
ing the  installation  of  a  temporary  dormitory  for 
the  scribes  and  attendants. 

The  Six  Day  Cyclopedic  Race,  as  it  was  always 
referred  to  subsequently,  took  place  in  the  Porch 
of  the  Throne,  or  of  Judgment,  a  beautiful  struc- 
ture made  entirely  of  cedar  in  which  the  King  was 
accustomed  to  render  decisions;  in  the  presence  of 
Jehoshaphat,  the  recorder  of  answers,  Ahiah  and 
Elihoreph,  the  chief  scribes,  the  advisers  whom 
Balkis  had  brought  with  her,  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra, 
Omar  Khayam  and  others,  and  her  corps  of  ear 
scratchers  and  tongue  rubbers. 

"The  Queen,"  Poteau  relates,  "sat  on  her  throne 
which  had  been  conveyed  for  the  purpose  from  her 
camp,  facing  Solomon  who  occupied  his  own  judg- 
ment seat — a  superb  chair  of  ivory  overlaid  with 
gold,  the  arms  of  which  were  formed  by  two  great 
beasts,  and  which  was  reached  by  a  flight  of  six 
steps,  each  of  them  flanked  with  lions,  leading  up 
to  his  solid  gold  foot-stool.  At  the  further  end  of 
the  Porch  an  orchestra  of  chalils,  shophars,  mashro- 
kitha,  tophs,  sistra,  timbrels  and  sackbuts  were  on 
duty  night  and  day  to  furnish  soft  music  during  the 

159 


sometimes  quite  lengthy  intervals  of  thought  be- 
tween questions." 

As  was  customary  in  such  cases,  the  meeting 
opened  with  an  address  by  the  host  in  which  every 
known  branch  of  knowledge  was  touched  upon  and 
set  forth  for  the  edification  of  the  guest.  As  may 
be  imagined,  with  such  a  lecturer  as  Solomon  this 
feature  of  the  program  took  up  considerable  time,1 
and  covered  every  subject  connected  with  the  earth, 
the  sea  and  the  sky,  the  animal,  mineral  and  vege- 
table kingdoms,  the  beautiful  and  the  damned,  and 
the  history  of  the  human  race  from  the  Age  of 
Innocence  down  to  the  Dangerous  Ages,  including 
the  mysterious  Wasted  Generation 

".  .  .  all  of  it  assembled,"  so  Poteau  states,  "in 
compact  form  in  what  was  known  as  Solomon's 
Outline  of  History,  or  Wells  of  Information,  two 
cosmic  volumes  embellished  with  charts." 

The  lecture  once  terminated,  the  second  part  of 
the  program  was  entered  upon  to  which  a  privileged 
public  was  admitted.  Three  black  pennies  having 
been  flipped  according  to  custom,  Solomon  won  the 
toss  and  prepared  to  ask  his  questions.  As  will  be 
seen  below  from  the  stylographic  reports  of  the 
proceedings  the  King's  riddles  give  evidence  of 

chroniclers  estimate  as  much  as  two  and  a  half  days. 
160 


careful  preparation  and  seem  to  have  troubled 
Balkis  not  a  little. 

SOLOMON:  "Some  hunters  went  hunting. 
They  said  afterwards,  'What  we  caught  we  threw 
away,  and  what  we  did  not  catch  we  kept.'  What 
were  they  hunting?" 

A  long  pause. 

BALKIS:  "Oh  dear!" 

Pause. 

BALKIS:  "I  don't  know." 

SOLOMON:  "Fleas." 

Laughter  among  the  Shebans. 

BALKIS :  "Aren't  you  horrid !" 

SOLOMON  :"A  temple  rests  upon  a  single  col- 
umn encircled  by  twelve  cities.  Each  city  has 
thirty  buttresses.  Each  buttress  has  two  women, 
one  white  and  one  black,  that  go  round  it  in  turns. 
Solve  the  riddle." 

BALKIS:  "I'm  all  mixed  up  already.  What 
was  the  first  part?" 

Question  repeated.    A  long  pause. 

BALKIS:  "How    many    buttresses    did    you 


say 


Question  repeated.  A  long  pause. 
BALKIS:  "Go  ahead,  I'll  bite!" 
Laughter.  Suppressed. 


IX 


161 


SOLOMON:  "The  temple  is  the  world,  the  col- 
umn the  year,  the  twelve  cities  are  the  months,  the 
thirty  buttresses  are  the  days,  the  two  women 
light  and  darkness." 

BALKIS:  "Oh,  but  you're  cheating!" 

Sensation  in  the  Porch. 

SOLOMON:  "Huh?" 

BALKIS :  "Some  of  the  months  have  thirty-one 
days.  Of  course  if  I'd  known  that— 

Loud  laughter  among  the  spectators.  Sup- 
pressed. Objection  sustained  by  the  recorder. 
Exception  taken  by  Solomon.  Noted. 

A  SHEBAN:    "Hooray  our  side!" 

RECORDER:  "Order  in  the  Porch!" 

SOLOMON:  "There  be  four  things  which  are 
little  upon  the  earth,  but  they  are  exceeding  wise." 

BALKIS:  "Now  don't  hurry  me- 

A  very  long  pause. 

BALKIS:  "Fish,  flesh  or  fowl?" 

SOLOMON:  "That's  a  leading  question." 

Objection  sustained  by  the  recorder.  A  long 
pause. 

BALKIS:  "Byrne!" 

SOLOMON:  "The  ants  are  a  people  not 
strong,  yet  they  prepare  their  meat  in  summer.  The 
conies  are  but  a  feeble  folk,  yet  make  they  their 

162 


houses  in  the  rocks.  The  locusts  have  no  King,  yet 
go  they  forth  all  of  them  by  bands.  The  spider 
taketh  hold  with  her  hands,  and  is  in  King's  houses.'* 

Applause. 

BALKIS:  "I  guessed  it  was  animals  anyway!" 

Laughter. 

BALKIS:  "That's  a  lovely  one,  isn't  it?" 

SOLOMON:  "Just  a  little  thing  of  my  own." 

Exit  Ahishar. 

SOLOMON:  "My  second  has  two  legs,  my 
whole  no  more,  And  yet  my  first  alone  has  always 
four." 

BALKIS :  "Now  let  me  think- 

A  long  pause.    Ahishar  returns. 

BALKIS:  "Oh  dear,  you've  got  me!" 

SOLOMON:  "Horse-man." 

BALKIS:  "Doggone  it!  You  know  every- 
thing, don't  you?" 

Laughter. 

SOLOMON:  "No.  There  be  three  things 
which  are  too  wonderful  for  me,  yea,  four  which  I 
know  not." 

BALKIS:  "Is  it  possible!  What  are  they, 
perhaps  I  can  tell  you." 

Loud  laughter.    Suppressed. 

BALKIS:  "What's  funny  about  that?" 

163 


RECORDER:  "Order  in  the  Porch.  Pass  out 
quietly  please." 

SOLOMON:  "The  way  of  an  eagle  in  the  air; 
the  way  of  a  serpent  upon  a  rock;  the  way  of  a 
ship  in  the  midst  of  the  sea;  and  the  way  of  a  man 
with  a  maid." 

Prolonged  applause. 

BALKIS:  "Oh,  that's  lovely.  I  don't  know 
how  you  do  it." 

A  VOICE :  "You  tell  them,  Balkis!" 

RECORDER:  "Throw  that  man  out." 

Scuffle.    A  spectator  is  ejected. 

BALKIS:  "It's  too  sweet,  really!" 

SOLOMON:  "Just  a  little  thing  of  my  own." 

Exit  Ahishar. 

BALKIS:  "You're  a  wise  one,  all  right  all 
right,  I'll  tell  the  world!" 

10 

And  then  it  was  the  Queen's  turn.  Before  an 
audience  which  packed  every  available  square  foot 
of  the  Porch  she  spread  out  her  tablets  before  her 
and  expounded  her  riddles,  some  of  which  seem  to 
have  thrown  the  meeting  into  an  uproar  and  greatly 
incensed  Solomon,  the  more  so  since  his  wives  in- 
sisted on  being  present  and  kept  up  a  continuous 

164 


babel  of  recrimination  at  his  failure  to  make  a 
better  showing. 

BALKIS:  "Ready?" 

SOLOMON:  "Shoot." 

BALKIS:  "Why  does  B  come  before  C  in  the 
alphabet?" 

A  pause. 

ICHNEUMON:  "Oh,  that's  easy!" 

A  pause. 

BALKIS :  "Can't  you  guess?    Shall  I  tell  you?" 

SOLOMON:  "Go  ahead." 

P'SALT:  "Quitter!" 

BALKIS:  "Because  a  man  must  be  before  he 
can  see.    I  think  that's  awfully  good,  don't  you?" 

SOLOMON:  "Slick!" 

ICHNEUMON:  "Not  so  good." 

BALKIS :  "Why  is  a  man  sailing  up  the  Tigris 
River  like  one  putting  his  father  into  a  sack?" 

TCHALK:  "Louder  and  funnier!" 

SOLOMON:  "Just  a  moment- 

A  pause. 

BALKIS:  "It's  a  peach.  You'll  never  guess  it." 

PSHA:  "Chestnut,  you  mean." 

A  pause. 

BALKIS:  "Give  it  up?" 

SOLOMON:  "All  right,  spill  it." 

165 


PILAFF:  "You  big  bum!" 

BALKIS:  "Because  he  is  going  to  Bagdad- 
see,  bag  dad?" 

Groans.  Suppressed.  Laughter  among  the 
Shebans. 

BALKIS:  "Got  you  that  time.  Here's 
another." 

ICHNEUMON:  "Now  then,  Solomon,  on 
your  toes!" 

BALKIS:  "How  many  soft-boiled  eggs  could 
Goliath  eat  on  an  empty  stomach?" 

PILAFF:  "I  think  that's  vulgar." 

BALKIS:  "Well,  what  do  you  say?" 

SOLOMON:  "Of  course  he  wouldn't  have  put 
all  his  eggs  in  the  same  bread  basket!" 

Cheers  from  the  grand-stand. 

P'SALT:  "Yeah,  Solomon!" 

RECORDER:  "Answer  the  question." 

SOLOMON :    "Seventy  times  seven." 

Applause. 

BALKIS:  "No,  silly!  Only  one,  because  aftei 
that  his  stomach  wouldn't  be  empty  any  longer. 
That's  a  good  one,  isn't  it?" 

SOLOMON:  "Wonderful." 

TCHALK:  "You  poor  boob!" 

BALKIS :  "Why  is  a  mouse  like  a  bale  of  hay?" 

166 


55 
?" 


A  long  pause. 

PANORAMA:  "Tee  hee,  tee  hee,  tee  h< 

SOLOMON:  "Shut up!" 

A  pause. 

BALKIS:  "Give  it  up?" 

PILAFF:  "Certainly  not- 

SOLOMON:  "All  right,  why? 

PILAFF:  "Goodnight." 

BALKIS:  "Because  the  cattle  eat  it.  See,  cat, 
cattle,  it's  a  play  on  words." 

Uproarious  laughter  among  the  Shebans.  Loud 
groans  from  the  spectators.  Hoshea  is  carried  out 
by  Abishai  and  others. 

BALKIS:  "I  think  that's  a  splendid  one,  don't 
you?" 

PSHA:  "Rotten!" 

SOLOMON:  "Have  you  very  many  more  like 
that?" 

Laughter.    Suppressed. 

BALKIS:  "Lots.  Try  this  one.  Why  are 
seeds,  when  sown,  like  gateposts?" 

ICHNEUMON:  "Come  on,  Solomon!" 

A  pause. 

BALKIS:  "Give  it  up?" 

SOLOMON:  Certainly  not.  Keep  still  a  mo- 
ment, can't  you?" 

167 


A  pause. 

BALKIS:  "Give  it  up,  do  you?" 

SOLOMON:  Expurgated  by  order  of  the-  re- 
corder. 

PANORAMA:  "Tee  hee,  tee— I  beg  pardon." 

SOLOMON:  "I  know.     Because  they  spring 
from  the  ground." 

Prolonged  applause. 

PILAFF:  "You  can't  laugh  that  off!" 

BALKIS:  "That's  awfully  good,  of  course,  but 
it's  not  the  right  answer." 

SOLOMON:  Expurgated  by  order  of  the  re- 
corder. 

ICHNEUMON:  Expurgated  by  order  of  the 
recorder. 

BALKIS:  "How  dare  you  speak  to  me  like 
that?" 

PILAFF :  Expurgated  by  order  of  the  recorder. 

PANORAMA:      "Tee  hee,   tee— ouch,   Psha, 
quit  pinching  me!" 

PSHA:  Expurgated  by  order  of  the  recorder. 

BALKIS:   Expurgated   by   order  of   the  re- 
corder. 

SOLOMON:  "There's  something  in  what  you 
say." 

RECORDER:  "Give  the  answer." 

168 


Suspense. 

BALKIS:  "The  right  answer  is  Because  they 
propagate — see,  prop  a  gate." 

SOLOMON:  "Oyoy!" 

Uproar.  Three  scribes  drop  dead.  Balkis 
laughs  for  twenty  minutes.  Solomon  has  a  fit  of 
apoplexy.  Meeting  adjourned. 

11 

And  finally  the  one  last  riddle  of  all,  which  the 
Queen  put  to  Solomon  in  private  on  the  evening 
before  her  departure  for  Sheba.  The  question 
which  had  brought  her  all  the  way  to  Jerusalem, 
and  his  answer  to  which  she  does  not  ever  seem  to 
have  understood. 

"Why  is  it,"  she  asked  him,  "that  I  who  am  so 
beautiful  and  have  had  so  many  suitors  cannot  find 
a  husband?" 

Solomon,  so  Poteau  states,  thought  for  a  long 
while  and  then  made  the  following  reply,  couched  in 
terms  least  calculated  to  offend  his  guest,  to  whom 
he  often  referred  afterwards  as  "that  asphinxiating 
woman." 

"Queen,"  he  told  her.  "There's  many  a  slip  of 
the  tongue  twixt  the  cup  arid  the  lip,  and  the  ear  is 
always  more  sensitive  than  the  eye." 

169 


"I  don't  get  you  at  all,"  Balkis  complained,  "but 
it  sounds  awfully  clever!" 

"Just  a  little  thing  of  my  own,"  Solomon  mur- 
mured. 

And  with  this  cryptic  utterance  to  ponder  over 
she  went  from  him,  loaded  with  gifts — lead  and  tin 
from  Tarshish  and  brass  from  Tubal,  emeralds  and 
cedar  and  fine  linen  from  Syria,  honey  and  oil  from 
Israel,  purple  and  blue  from  Eden  and  Tyre — 
and  returned  to  her  own  country. 

".  .  .  in  what  perplexity  of  mind,"  to  quote 
Poteau's  beautiful  passage,  "one  cannot  surmise; 
leaving  behind  her  such  memories  as  one  may  not 
presume  to  speculate  upon.  A  great  and  welcome 
silence  descended  on  Jerusalem,  but  from  the  sum- 
mit of  Ophel  a  glory  was  departed,  over  the  Valley 
of  Hinnom  the  smoke  of  many  camp  fires  was  dis- 
persed, in  the  House  of  Lebanon  a  faint  aroma 
floated  for  many  days,  and  then  died. 

And  on  the  throne  in  the  Porch  of  Judgment  per- 
haps one  sat  who  brooded  over  many  things,  and 
came  to  regret  his  wisdom.  Who  knows?" 


170 


CHAPTER  VIII 

OVER  THE  HOT  SANDS 


Poteau's  account  ends  with  that  unanswerable 
question,  leaving  the  reader  to  seek  from  other 
sources  the  history  of  the  Queen's  subsequent 
career.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  student  of  her 
life  is  brought  face  to  face  with  a  baffling  perplex- 
ity. He  turns  eagerly  to  all  the  authorities  on  this 
period,  only  to  find  that  each  of  them  abandons 
Balkis  at  the  outset  of  the  return  voyage,  without 
a  single  reference  to  her  homecoming.1 

Heimweh,  who  of  course  denies  that  she  ever  un- 
dertook the  journey,  has  naturally  nothing  to  say 
on  this  point,  and  closes  his  chronicle  with  a  report 
of  the  death  of  Shush  which  seems  to  have  occurred 
shortly  after  the  conference  at  Tyre,  from  which 
one  learns  that: 

"His  discomfiture  over  the  outcome  of  his  care- 
fully laid  plans  brought  on  an  attack  of  the  blind 
staggers  from  which  the  aged  monarch  never  re- 
covered. For  three  weeks  he  lay  at  Yathil  unable 

1  Horn  blower,  for  instance,  says  simply: 

" she  folded  her  tents  and  departed,  with  her  cats 

and  her  catalogues,  her  tablets  and  tabbies.  So  passed  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  figures  in  history." 

171 


to  stir  a  finger,  although  his  mind  was  active  until 
the  end,  and  then  he  breathed  his  last,  gently  but 
firmly,  in  his  two  hundred  and  seventy-sixth  year. 

'This  hurts  me  more  than  it  does  you!'  were  his 
dying  words. 

One  imagines  him  lying  there  recapitulating  the 
events  of  his  inordinately  long  life,  searching 
through  the  storehouses  of  his  memory  for  ever 
more  and  more  distant  recollections — his  descen- 
dants gathered  around  him  on  his  one  hundredth 
birthday,  and  the  statues  in  the  gardens  at  Yathil, 
and  the  soft  voice  of  Aida,  and  the  waters  of  the 
Red  Sea  that  would  not  stand  aside,  and  his  first 
jeweled  box,  and  his  father's  long  whiskers,  and  a 
gold  rattle.  .  ." 

Transom  is  equally  obscure.  He  devotes  long 
chapters  to  the  political  consequences  of  the  Queen's 
mission,  continuing  his  narrative  through  decades  of 
Sheban  foreign  policy,  but  of  Balkis  he  never 
breathes  a  syllable  from  the  time  he  leaves  her  at 
the  Ephraim  Gate. 

This  reticence  is  even  more  marked  in  the  case  of 
Gorton.  He,  for  his  part,  extends  his  secret  revela- 
tions of  the  court  of  Sheba  for  several  volumes,  in 
the  introduction  to  which  one  is  astonished  to  dis- 
cover that: 

172 


"Soon  after  her  return  to  Marib,  Sophonisba 
married  Shenanikin  and,  to  the  great  annoyance  of 
all  concerned,  established  a  new  dynasty  which 
ruled  in  Sheba  for  many  generations." 

But  of  Balkis  never  a  word,  not  even  of  a  ficti- 
tious nature,  and  where  Gorton  is  afraid  to  tread 
must  indeed  be  perilous  ground ! 

All  this  is  extremely  disconcerting. 


It  becomes  positively  astounding  when  one  looks 
for  a  solution  of  the  problem  in  the  writings  of 
Talmud  and  Shenanikin,  and  in  the  Queen's  own 
diaries.  For  in  none  of  them  does  one  come  across 
the  slightest  clue  which  affords  any  indication  of 
the  Queen's  fate. 

Talmud,  one  is  disappointed  to  learn,  died  only 
a  few  months  after  the  departure  of  Balkis  for 
Jerusalem. 

Shenanikin,  with  his  customary  indifference  to 
his  surroundings,  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
aware  of  the  return  of  the  natives  until  several 
months  had  elapsed,  and  when  he  finally  does  refer 
to  the  subject  it  is  only  to  plunge  into  rhapsodies 
over  Sophonisba,  in  the  midst  of  which  such  un- 
important details  as  the  whereabouts  of  his 

173 


infill,  (illlfl  ®(F 


sovereign  niece  seem  to  have  escaped  his  attention 
completely. 

One  turns  breathlessly  then  to  the  pages  of  the 
Queen's  diary  to  be  confronted  with  the  fact  that 
the  last  entry  is  written  somewhere  between  Ezion 
and  Marib,  on  the  last  long  stage  of  the  journey 
which  she  set  out  to  make  entirely  by  land  this  time. 
A  quite  insignificant  entry  from  which  one  gathers 
that  the  caravan  was  progressing  normally  and 
without  any  hint  of  impending  mishap. 


All  that  one  can  distill  from  this  conspiracy  of 
silence,  therefore,  is  that  she  was  alive  and  well  at 
a  point  approximately  midway  between  Ezion  and 
the  borders  of  Sheba,  that  her  suite  arrived  in 
safety  at  Marib,  and  that  she  herself  vanished 
utterly  from  the  scene,  no  record  of  the  occurrence 
appearing  in  any  contemporary  chronicle. 

Such  an  event  is  obviously  incredible,  and  for 
centuries  scholars,  historians  and  biographers,  irre- 
spective of  their  assumed  indifference  arising  no 
doubt  from  an  inability  to  answer  the  riddle,  have 
asked  themselves  the  ever  pressing  question: 

"What  happened  to  Balkis?" 

The  customary  explanation  of  course  has  always 

174 


been  that  she  died  of  some  sudden  illness,  and, 
owing  to  the  lack  of  embalming  facilities,  was 
buried  under  the  shifting  sands  of  the  desert,  the 
failure  of  the  archives  of  Sheba  to  mention  the 
royal  demise  being  charged  plausibly  enough  to 
existing  lapses  in  the  record  of  this  period.  So, 
little  by  little,  the  legends  have  spread  broadcast 
over  the  universe,  shrouding  the  end  of  Balkis  in 
veils  of  impenetrable  mystery.  Any  student  of  the 
subject  is  familiar  with  the  superstitions  that  cluster 
around  her  name — that  she  sleeps  to  this  day  in 
some  secret  place  and  will  return  in  her  own 
appointed  time  1 ;  that  once  in  every  hundred  years 
on  the  night  preceding  May  Day  she  revisits  the 
earth  and  appears  in  human  form,  the  last  reported 
materialization  having  taken  place  in  1823  on  the 
Yale  Campus,  at  New  Haven,  Connecticut.2 

With  such  old  wives'  tales  to  embellish  the  issue, 
with  so  complete  a  dearth  of  historical  data,  so 
widespread  a  failure  on  the  part  of  scholars  to 
dispel  the  mystery,  the  human  race  might  have 
continued  for  ever  in  ignorance  of  the  solution  were 

1 A  belief  which  suggests  to  Steinkopf  the  origin  of  the  Brunne- 
hilda  and  Barbarossa  myths. 

2  This  has  been  officially  denied  by  the  University  authorities,  but 
persists,  nonetheless,  in  undergraduate  tradition. 

175 


fffilli 


it  not  for  some  extraordinary  discoveries,  them- 
selves the  fruit  of  arduous  and  painstaking  labors, 
here  presented  to  the  world  for  the  first  time  in 
this  work. 

"What  happened  to  Balkis?" 

Such  is  the  question  which  has  so  vexed  humanity, 
and  at  last  now  it  can  be  told,  and  in  so  doing  there 
is  more  that  must  be  told. 

4 

In  1906  the  present  writer  had  occasion  to  spend 
several  weeks  in  a  deserted  farmhouse  near  the 
fishing  village  of  Beeswax,  Maine,  while  passing 
through  the  tedious  period  of  convalescence  after  a 
severe  attack  of  temporary  insanity.  Left  to  his 
own  resources  during  the  long  solitary  evenings,  he 
formed  the  habit  of  rummaging  through  the  attic, 
searching  for  lost  wills,  hidden  documents  and  rare 
books  such  as  are  not  infrequently  found  in  such 
repositories. 

His  zeal  had  already  been  rewarded  by  the  dis- 
covery of  a  first  folio  Shakespeare,  two  hitherto 
unknown  volumes  by  Benjamin  Franklin,  and  a 
complete  set  of  the  Bowdoin  College  Alumni 
Bulletin  much  sought  after  by  collectors,  when 
in  moving  a  large  Sheraton  sideboard  he  came 

176 


across  a  heavy  little  trunk  of  ancient  design,  the 
ponderous  iron  hinges  of  which  had  rusted  and 
fallen  apart  with  age. 

Upon  inspection,  this  was  found  to  contain 
several  thousand  fragments  of  torn  paper  of  dif- 
ferent sizes  and  quality,  closely  covered  with  faded 
writing  in  varying  colors  of  ink,  which  at  a  glance 
was  seen  to  be  in  monkish  Latin  by  the  same  hand. 
As  may  be  imagined,  such  a  find  could  only  appeal 
as  one  of  absorbing  interest  to  the  discoverer  who 
forthwith  purchased  the  farmhouse  and  all  its 
contents,  and  set  himself  to  the  task  of  reconstitut- 
ing the  document. 

After  ten  years  of  unremitting  labor,  guided  by 
the  various  colored  inks  and  the  different  textures 
of  parchment,  the  writer  was  able  to  piece  together 
the  manuscript  which  under  his  hand  took  the  form 
of  a  thick  volume  several  hundred  pages  in  length, 
the  contents  of  which  he  then  proceeded  to  trans- 
late with  such  eagerness  of  spirit  as  even  a  layman 
will  no  doubt  appreciate.  Judge  of  his  disappoint- 
ment, therefore,  when  after  a  feverish  perusal  of 
the  thickly  lettered  pages  the  book  revealed  itself 
to  be  merely  a  school  reader,  in  use  probably  in 
some  monastic  academy,  and  of  interest  only  to 
pedagogues  as  will  be  seen  from  the  following  ex- 


12 


tracts   chosen  at  random  from  the  body  of  the 
text: 

"I  have  a  pig,  a  little  more  piggy  than  other  pigs. 
He  has  an  understanding  heart.  His  name  is 
Aeschilus  Aesop  Aeneas  Epaminondas.  He  waits 
patient  waits  for  me  at  the  door  and  makes  joy 
squeals. 

I  have  a  lamb.  His  name  is  Genseric  Attila 
Nebuchadnezzar  Hannibal.  He  has  needs  to  be 
clipped. 

Down  the  road  where  I  do  live  there  are  two  tall 
trees.  Bohunkus  is  the  name  of  one,  Josephus  is 
the  other. 

Under  the  trees  there  does  sit  a  dog  who  gives 
me  tremblings.  He  has  not  an  understanding 
heart.  His  name  is  Tamburlane  Appolyon 
Theodoric  Bajazet,  and  he  gives  me  long  crooked 
looks.  .  .  ." 

With  a  heavy  heart  the  writer,  embittered  by  a 
decade  of  fruitless  toil,  was  on  the  point  of  sending 
the  manuscript  to  a  Boston  magazine,  when  by 
the  merest  chance  he  came  upon  a  startling  dis- 
covery. On  the  margin  of  the  two  hundred  and 
thirteenth  page  unmistakable  indications  of  erasure 
were  observed.  A  meticulous  examination  of  other 
margins  revealed  a  similar  state  of  affairs. 

178 


The  manuscript  was  unquestionably  a  palimp- 
sest! 

With  renewed  hope  the  margins  were  subjected 
page  by  page  to  all  the  standard  tests,  as  a  result 
of  which  it  became  apparent  that  the  original  writ- 
ing had  been  done  with  ink  made  from  the  juice  of 
the  gall  apple,  which  in  turn  had  been  erased  with 
a  mixture  of  milk,  cheese  and  lime.  Whereupon 
the  entire  volume  was  washed  discreetly  with  water, 
and  treated  with  dilute  muriatic  acid  and  finally 
with  prussiate  of  potash.1 

This  task  consumed  two  years,  at  the  end  of 
which  a  complete  manuscript  in  an  unknown 
tongue  had  emerged  from  beneath  the  super- 
imposed Latin.  What  long  forgotten  treasure  was 
now  about  to  be  restored  to  mankind — that  was  the 
question  1 

It  was  now  late  in  the  summer  of  1918. 

Another  year  was  spent  in  the  identification  of 
this  lost  language,  requiring,  as  may  be  imagined, 
the  most  searching  investigations  and  comparisons, 
until  success  crowned  these  efforts  and  it  became 
established  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt  that  the  docu- 
ment was  in  Neurotic,  a  little  known,  and  entirely 
extinct,  dialect  of  central  Arabia.  It  then  became 

1  Tinctura  Oiobertina. 

179 


necessary  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  Neurotic  in 
order  to  translate  the  writing,  an  undertaking 
fraught  with  stupendous  difficulties  since  no 
grammar  of  this  obscure  tongue  is  available  any- 
where in  the  world,  the  only  copy  having  been 
possessed  by  the  ill-fated  Library  of  Louvain.  But, 
nothing  daunted,  the  writer  persevered  and  finally, 
after  two  more  years  of  unceasing  toil,  he  was  in  a 
position  to  unbar  the  portals  of  the  secret. 

On  the  very  first  page  the  word  BALKIS  came 
shining  forth  from  the  text  like  a  beacon ! 


Upon  careful  examination  the  document  so 
fortuitously  rescued  from  oblivion  proved  to  be  the 
journal  of  a  certain  Ptunk,  an  Egyptian  by  birth, 
in  the  confidential  employ  of  a  Bedouin  chieftain. 
The  greater  part  of  his  writing  has  to  do  with  the 
routine  matters  connected  with  his  service,  and  is 
of  no  immediate  concern  to  readers  of  this  work, 
much  of  it,  indeed,  being  taken  up  with  references 
to  his  small  son,  P.  3rd;  but  at  the  outset  of  his 
chronicle  he  gives  an  account  of  a  series  of  events 
which  solve  once  and  for  all,  after  some  three  thou- 
sand years  of  perplexity,  the  mystery  concerning 
the  disappearance  of  Balkis. 

180 


Such,  no  less,  is  the  nature  of  the  material  which 
the  present  writer  is  now  in  a  position  to  set  before 
the  public  as  a  result  of  fifteen  years  of  labor, 
counting  himself  amply  rewarded  in  that  he  should 
have  been  chosen  by  Providence  to  be  the  humble 
instrument  whereby  this  epoch  making  discovery 
is  presented  to  mankind. 

That  portion  of  the  manuscript  dealing  with 
Balkis,  reproduced  herewith  for  the  first  time  in 
any  language,  has  been  faithfully  translated  from 
the  original  in  the  possession  of  the  writer,  who  is 
prepared  to  submit  the  latter  for  the  inspection  of 
experts  and  learned  societies  in  any  part  of  the 
world.  Those  familiar  with  Neurotic  will  note  at 
once  that  the  manuscript  is  in  the  famous  Bes' 
Tsellar  dialect.  As  can  readily  be  ascertained  by 
comparison,  the  only  alterations  in  the  text  consist 
of  sundry  emendations,  indicated  below,  which  the 
graphic  style  of  the  scribe  seemed  to  render  advisa- 
ble in  a  work  destined  for  general  consumption. 

6 

The  story  runs  as  follows: 

"I  am  Ptunk,  the  discreet,  soft-footed  and  per- 
fectly trained  servant  of  my  Lord,  Achmet  Ben 
Tarzan,  the  Sheik  of  the  Desert. 

181 


My  Lord  is  a  perfect  devil  with  the  women.  He 
is  a  mixture  of  well-bred  brutality  and  languid  in- 
solence which  gets  them  every  time.  He  is  the 
tallest,  broadest,  strongest,  handsomest,  cruellest 
and  most  passionate  man  in  Arabia.  His  word  is 
law.  He  is  utterly  pitiless  when  aroused  and 
shows  no  mercy.  But  he  has  got  his  at  last. 

It  came  to  pass  that  my  Lord  went  on  a 
pilgrimage  to  Marib  to  gaze  upon  the  maddening 
beauty  of  the  Queen,  Balkis.  From  that  day  forth 
he  spared  no  effort  of  his  iron  will  in  order  to  win 
her  for  himself,  by  fair  means  or  foul,  preferably 
foul,  for  such  is  his  fiery,  indomitable  Bedouin 
nature.  The  Queen,  all  unconscious  of  the  inexora- 
ble fate  which  lay  in  store  for  her,  played  into  his 
hands.  She  went  on  a  journey  to  Jerusalem.  The 
rest  was  easy. 

Months  passed,  and  the  Queen's  caravan  pitched 
camp  on  the  return  journey  at  an  oasis,  the  precise 
locality  of  which  my  Lord  was  aware  of.  He  wished 
to  know.  It  was  quite  simple. 

Night  fell  and  the  camp  sank  to  rest ;  like  gaunt, 
silent  shadows  my  Lord  and  I  gave  the  sentinels 
the  slip  and  entered  the  Queen's  tent.  With  burn- 
ing eyes  my  Lord  lifted  her  in  his  strong  arms  and 
placed  her  in  a  sack  which  he  had  brought  with 

182 


him.  My  Lord  leaves  nothing  to  chance.  Quick 
as  a  flash  he  turned,  and  with  noiseless  footsteps 
retraced  his  way  to  the  spot  where  our  high-spirited 
steeds  were  waiting,  unobserved  of  all. 

At  this  point  the  Queen,  aroused  by  the  fiery 
pressure  of  his  encircling  arms,  freed  her  head  from 
the  sack  and  would  have  screamed,  but  before  the 
flaming  light  of  desire  which  lit  up  his  stern,  scorn- 
ful face  the  words  died  on  her  lips. 

'Ha,  ha,  my  proud  beauty!'  My  Lord  hissed 
through  half  closed  eyes,  with  his  usual  long,  slow, 
smile.  'You  are  mine,  mine,  mine ! ' 

'I  heard  you  the  first  time,'  the  Queen  gasped 
hoarsely,  and  strove  desperately  to  bite  his  thumb. 

'Ha,  witch,  you  would,  would  you?'  My  Lord 
whispered  in  commanding  tones.  'Take  that,  and 
that,  and  that!' 

And  with  a  gesture  of  supreme  indifference  he 
sprang  lightly  into  the  saddle,  crushing  her  to  his 
heaving  breast  with  one  hand  while  with  the  other 
he  gave  free  rein  to  his  frenzied  mount.  So  for  nine 
nights  and  days  we  galloped  across  the  desert, 
forging  ahead  over  the  boundless  sands,  while  the 
Queen,  wearied  by  her  futile  struggles,  lay  still  and 
helpless  like  a  puppet,  or  like  some  trapped  wild 
thing,  in  my  Lord's  iron  grasp. 

183 


infill,  I 


On  the  evening  of  the  tenth  night  the  palm  trees 
of  our  beautiful  desert  home  loomed  up  over  the 
horizon.  In  a  few  hours  we  were  dismounting 
before  my  Lord's  spacious  tent  and  entering  the 
vast  apartment  fitted  with  every  convenience — and 
filled  with  a  motley  collection  of  quaint  knick- 
knacks  such  as  he  loves  to  have  about  him — where, 
when  not  in  the  saddle,  he  resides  in  surroundings 
of  mingled  barbaric  splendor  and  dignified  luxury. 

My  Lord,  laughing  softly,  pulled  the  Queen  out 
of  the  sack  by  her  hair  and  cast  it  from  him  far  out 
into  the  night.  Then  with  a  gesture  of  careless 
contempt  he  flung  her  onto  a  pile  of  soft  cushions 
in  a  corner  of  the  tent  where  she  lay  silently  quiver- 
ing with  pent-up  emotions,  while  he  gave  a  few  curt 
orders  to  his  men  who  stood  before  him  in  attitudes 
of  easy  grace  mingled  with  respectful  deference 
prepared  to  obey  his  slightest  wish. 

'Who  are  you?'  the  Queen  asked  finally,  in  sub- 
dued accents  mixed  with  pride. 

'Who  am  I — ha  ha — I  am  the  Sheik  Achmet  Ben 
Tarzan,'  my  Lord  informed  her  nonchalantly,  with 
a  look  which  stripped  the  covers  off  the  cushions 
and  left  them  bare  before  him. 

'What  are  you  going  to  do  to  me?'  she  muttered 
hoarsely. 

184 


'I  give  you  three  guesses,'  my  Lord  replied,  with 
another  long,  low  laugh. 

The  Queen  drew  herself  up  to  her  full  height 
and  held  herself  proudly  erect. 

'Why  have  you  done  this  to  me,  you  brute?'  she 
screamed  brokenly. 

'Why  have  I  done  this  to  you?'  my  Lord  repeated 
her  words  with  a  mocking  smile.  'Because  I  want 
you.  I  want  what  I  want  when  I  want  it.  And 
now — ha  ha — I  want  you!' 

With  a  few  quick  steps  he  was  at  her  side  and 
caught  her  in  his  arms,  crushing  her  to  him  until 
her  ribs  cracked.  Struggle  as  she  might  against  his 
savage  embraces  she  was  utterly  helpless  in  his 
hands  which  well  she  knew  could  have  broken  her 
like  a  toy.  Passionately  he  kissed  her  lips,  her  hair, 
her  eyes,  her  ears,  her  nose,  her  neck,  her 
shoulder,  her  wrist,  her  elbow  and  her  left  foot 
which  had  somehow  become  tangled  up  in  the  loose 
folds  of  his  long  flowing  robe.  Then  with  a  sudden 
change  of  mood  he  let  her  go,  and  she  fell  back  onto 
the  cushions  with  a  dull  thud. 

'Now  then,  stop  your  nonsense/  my  Lord  com- 
manded with  a  significant  scowl.  'And  make  it 
snappy!'  And,  drawing  his  robe  closely  about  his 
manly  form,  he  stalked  majestically  from  the  tent. 

185 


In  a  few  moments  he  returned,  his  cruel  lips 
parted  in  a  lingering  smile,  his  eyes  half  open,  half 
shut,  to  find  that  she  had  not  stirred. 

'What's  the  big  idea?'  he  asked  with  a  pitiless 
laugh.  'Must  I  wait  on  you  as  well  as  for  you?' 

Whereupon . . 


During  the  following  weeks  I  observed  that  a 
great  change  had  come  over  my  Lord.  At  the  first 
he  had  simply  taken  the  Queen  to  satisfy  a  passing 
fancy,  meaning  to  toss  her  aside  when  he  had 
wearied  of  her,  but  now  he  was  becoming  desper- 
ately enamored  of  her.  I,  who  know  him  so  in- 
timately, could  see  it  in  a  hundred  different  ways. 

He  began,  for  instance,  to  treat  her  with 
extraordinary  brutality  mingled  with  scorn,  drag- 
ging her  around  the  tent  by  her  hair  and  maltreat- 
ing her  to  his  heart's  content. 

'Kiss  me,  you  little  piece  of  cheese!'  he  would 
command  through  clenched  teeth,  and  when  she 

refused 

186 


And  the  Queen  always  refused.  Roughly  as  my 
Lord  might  handle  her  she  gave  him  kick  for  kick 
and  blow  for  blow,  fighting  like  a  tigress  against 
his  passionate  advances.  It  is  true  that  she  was 
aided  in  this  by  the  fact  that  she  was  double- jointed, 
which  enabled  her  to  wriggle  out  of  my  Lord's 
grasp  at  the  most  unexpected  moments. 

'Keep  still,  you  little  clown!'  my  Lord  hissed 
savagely  on  such  occasions,  but  she  only  laughed 
bitterly  in  his  face. 

'You  brute,  you  beast!'  she  gasped  loudly.  'I 
hate  you,  I  hate  you,  I  hate  you!' 

'That's  something  else  again,'  my  Lord  replied 
with  a  heavy  sigh  and  went  forth  and  killed  three 
horses  with  his  bare  hands. 

'What  makes  you  so  wild?'  she  shrilled  at  him 
once  in  the  midst  of  one  of  their  arguments. 

'I  have  catnip  in  my  blood,'  my  Lord  snarled 
hoarsely.  'That's  what  makes  me  wild.' 

It  was  clear  to  me  that  this  state  of  affairs  could 
not  endure  much  longer.  And,  indeed,  the  end 
came  very  shortly.  My  Lord  was  in  the  act  one 
afternoon  of  throwing  a  stool  at  the  Queen  when, 

187 


YINBL4I 


taking  advantage  of  his  upraised  arm,  she  sprang 
at  him  with  a  knife  and  stabbed  him  seventeen 
times. 

'You  wretch,'  she  screamed  breathlessly.  ' Curse 
you,  curse  you!' 

'I'm  stuck  for  fair!'  my  Lord  gasped  throatily 
and  crashed  insensible  to  the  floor. 

And  then  an  extraordinary  thing  happened. 
While  I  was  hastening  to  my  Lord's  side  to  tend 
his  wounds  the  Queen  suddenly  pushed  me  away 
and  fell  on  her  knees  beside  him,  moaning  and 
weeping,  and  fondling  his  hand. 

'Oh,  what  have  I  done?'  she  murmured  brokenly. 
'What  have  I  done?  Achmet  Ben  Tarzan,  my 
beautiful  Arab,  speak  to  me,  speak  to  me !  I  didn't 
know  before  but  I  know  now,  and,  oh,  the  dif- 
ference to  me!  Love  has  come  to  me  at  last.  You 
are  a  lawless  savage,  a  wild  night  creature,  a  superb 
brute,  a  fierce  desert  man,  and  I  love  you,  I  love 
you,  I  love  you!' 

'Don't  bite  the  hand  that's  beating  you,'  my 
Lord  muttered  faintly,  and  the  Queen  bowed  her 
head  on  his  breast,  sobbing  quietly. 

Whereupon  I  retired,  knowing  as  I  did  that  no 
service  of  mine  could  compare  with  the  gentle 
ministration  of  loving  hands.  For  three  hours  my 

188 


Lord  hovered  between  life  and  death,  and  then 
his  eyes  opened  slowly  and  rested  upon  the  Queen's 
upturned  face,  beaming  with  happiness,  love  and 
devotion. 

'I  am  yours/  she  cried  tensely.  'Take  me  in 
your  strong  arms  and  hold  me  close,  Achmet  Ben 
Tarzan,  my  beautiful  Arab  lover — Achmet — my 
Lord ' 

'Maybe  I  will,  and  then  again  maybe  I  won't,' 
my  Lord  whispered  sternly,  but  I,  who  know  him 
so  intimately,  saw  that  all  was  well  with  them 
both." 

That  section  of  Ptunk's  manuscript  directly  con- 
cerned with  Balkis  ends  at  that  point.  He  goes  on 
then  to  other  matters,  and  there  one  must  leave  her, 
Balkis  the  Tomboy,  Queen  of  Sheba,  become  the 
desert  bride  of  an  Arab  Sheik;  sharing  the  hard- 
ships of  his  roving  life,  she  who  had  known  the 
glories  of  Solomon's  court;  queening  it  over  his 
little  group  of  faithful  followers,  she  who  had  ruled 
over  millions.  What  did  life  bring  to  her  of  joy 
and  sorrow,  of  security  and  strife,  of  prosperity 
and  ill-fortune — that  no  one  will  ever  know. 

One  last  question,  however,  arises  as  one  prepares 
to  close  the  chronicle  of  her  days.  How  was  it  that 
the  Arab  chieftain  whose  wife  she  became  was 

189 


able  to  accommodate  himself  to  that  defect  which 
had  hitherto  driven  all  men  away  from  her? 

The  answer  is  found  in  a  brief  sentence  of 
Ptunk's  subsequent  narrative. 

"My  Lord,  Achmet  Ben  Tarzan,"  he  states, 
"was  very  nearly  stone  deaf,  and  became  entirely 
so  shortly  after  his  marriage  with  Balkis. 

Fortunate  man.        ." 


190 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Balkis,  Balkis  of  Sheba,  an  Autobiography.  Translated 
from  the  original  manuscript  by  the  Pan-Arabian  Society. 
Cairo,  1886. 

Bjorn,  The  Origin  of  Catchwords.     Edinburgh,  1907. 

Filbert,  Marib  Old  and  New.     Boston,  1911. 

Gorton,  Secret  Memoirs  of  the  Court  of  Sheba.  New  York, 
1904. 

Gossoon,  Underlying  Causes  of  History.     Oxford,  1899. 

Heimweh,  Zeitgenossen  der  Konigin  Balkis.    Leipsic,  1897. 

Hornblower,  The  Enigma  of  Sheba.     Boston,  1886. 

Kernberlin,  Music  of  the  Ancients.     Chicago,  1902. 

Lepage,  Le  Roi  Shush  Quint.    Toulouse,  1905. 

Outhouse,  With  Shush  in  Africa.     Philadelphia,  1894. 

Popover,  Mainim  Highways  and  Byways.     London,  1907. 

Poteau,  Voyages  de  la  Reine  de  Saba.    Paris,  1898. 

Sackcloth,  Climatic  Changes  and  their  Causes.  Boston, 
1902. 

Shenanikin,  Mirrors  of  Marib.  Translated  from  the 
original  manuscript  by  the  Pan- Arabian  Society.  Cairo,  1887. 

Steinkopf,  Gestern  und  Vorgestern.     Stuttgart,  1884. 

Talmud,  Diaries  of  a  Court  Physician.  Translated  from 
the  original  manuscript  by  the  Pan-Arabian  Society.  Cairo, 
1885. 

Tortoni,  Ma'in  la  Bella.     Florence,  1908. 

Transom,  Eminent  Shebans.     Canterbury,   1919. 

Trouthook,  Street  Cries  and  Epithets  of  old  Ma'in. 
London,  1806. 

The  Archives  of  Tyre. 

The  Annals  of  Sheba. 

The  Hebron  Papyrus. 

The  Ptunk,  or  Crutch,  Manuscript.     Hitherto  unpublished. 

191 


Mirrors  of  Washington 

Anonymous 

Octavo,       Portraits 

This  book  does  for  our  statesmen  and  public 
men,  what  "the  gentleman  with  a  duster" 
did  for  eminent  Englishmen  in  The  Mirrors  of 
Downing  Street.  Painfully  plain  truths  about 
the  major  personalities  of  the  present  and  the 
recently  past  era  are  told — the  minds,  hearts, 
and  souls  of  the  great  men  of  America  are 
dissected.  The  author  speaks  in  plain  English 
and  does  not  mince  matters  where  his  dis- 
cussions of  the  personalities  and  the  psychol- 
ogy of  the  statesmen  of  today  are  concerned. 

This  volume  is  not  ill-natured,  but  it  is  a 
searching  and  an  unbending  survey  that  will 
unquestionably  make  Washington  and  the 
country  at  large,  "sit  up  and  take  notice." 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


By  the  Author  of 
"The  Mirrors  of  Downing  Street" 

THE  GLASS  OF 
FASHION 

SOME  SOCIAL  REFLECTIONS 

The  Author  prefers  to  remain  anonymous 
He  signs  himself 

A  GENTLEMAN  WITH  A  DUSTER 

With  Portraits 

"  The  Gentleman  with  a  Duster  "  who  so  mercilessly 
and  brilliantly  clarified  the  mirrors  of  Downing  Street, 
now  turns  his  attention  to  English  Society — and  what  a 
drubbing  it  gets.  Perhaps  the  sorriest  victims  to  fall 
under  his  cleanser  are  Col.  Repington  and  Margot 
Asquith.  His  name  for  the  latter  will  surely  stick — "  The 
Grandmother  of  the  Flapper."  But  society  at  large  is 
not  spared,  and  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  sin- 
cerity of  the  author.  The  Spectator,  realizing  this,  says, 
"  The  book  is  not  a  piece  of  mere  Grubb  Street  morality 
prepared  by  someone  who  thinks  that  this  is  the  dish  the 
public  desires  at  the  moment." 

The  Class  of  Fashion  is  at  times  savagely  ferocious,  but 
it  scintillates  brilliancy  throughout. 

NEW  YORK    G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS      LONDON 


Painted  Windows 

By 
A  Gentleman  with  a  Duster 

6°.  12  Illustrations 

The  author  of  Minors  of  Downing  Street, 
and  The  Glass  of  Fashion,  whose  words  of 
inspiring  truth  have  spread  to  every  part 
of  the  world  where  English  is  spoken,  re- 
vea  Is  in  Painted  Windows  the  chaos  of  opinion 
which  exists  in  the  modern  Church.  But 
there  is  no  pulling  down, — the  book  is  con- 
structive, hopeful;  destroying  only  that 
which  cumbers  the  ground,  and  destroying 
with  brilliant  and  amazing  surety. 

"PAINTED  WINDOWS,"  says  the  Philadelphia 
Public  Ledger,  "is  no  laugh  in  the  void,  no  flash  in 
the  dark,  but  a  searching  criticism  of  men  and 
the  church  in  an  hour  that  calls  for  spiritual 
leadership  and  power." 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


The 
Cruise  of  the  Kawa 

By 

Dr.  Walter  E.  Traprock, 

F.  R.  S.  S.  E.  U. 

A  delicious  literary  burlesque — superlatively 
amusing.  Here  are  found  the  wakswak,  that 
horrid  super-seamonster ;  the  gallant  fatwliva 
birds  who  lay  square  eggs;  the  flowing  hoopa 
bowl,  and  the  sensuous  nabtscus  plant;  the 
tantalizing,  tatooing,  fabulous  folk  music;  the 
beautiful,  trusting  Filbertine  women  and  their 
quaint  marriage  customs,  as  well  as  the  dread 
results  of  the  white  man's  coming — all  described 
with  a  frank  freedom,  literary  charm  and  meticu- 
lous regard  for  truth  which  is  delightful. 

The  Cruise  of  the  Kawa  stands  unique  among 
the  literature  of  modern  exploration.  Nothing 
like  it  has  ever  come  out  of  the  South  Seas.  It 
is  the  travel  book  of  years.  Strikingly  illustrated, 
too,  from  special  photographs,  it  tells  pictorially, 
as  well  as  verbally,  the  exciting,  amusing  and 
entertaining  story  of  an  exploration  in  the  South 
Seas. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New  York  London 


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